*she lives in this house over there/ has her world outside it*
In the summer we reclined with good books in the backyard...just the six of us. Three dogs, two almost parents, and one unborn bean. It was in this very setting that I discovered the most exact words on what it meant to be a mother. They were honest. They were simple. They were truth. "We change shape, she continued, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut our long hair. We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We loose muscle tone, sleep, reason, perspective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and-look!-they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squashed tin along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going. We learn to darn, perhaps to cook, to patch the knees of dungarees. We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us.