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Date published: 5/11/2003
MOTHERS MAKE SYNONYMS of love and life. In the darkness of our personal prehistories, before memory recorded its first jot, mothers tenderly tended our most basic needs, filling our gaping mouths, depending on our station in the animal kingdom, with worms or nutritious regurgitation or a nipple. In a few species, it's true, males nurture the young, so these words may have little resonance with readers who happen to be, say, sea horses. But for most of us whose ancestors shipped out on the Ark, with a sense of special devotion we hereby tweet, snort, whinny, honk, moo, and say, "Happy Mothers Day, Mom!" Of course, the contributions of mothers are not what the Good Book calls "bread alone" (or, to speak precisely, milk alone). In a rather cruel experiment--somewhere in South America, if memory serves--orphaned babes were divided into two groups, and each given identical care--the same food, changing schedule, etc. With a single exception. One group was deprived of a sole, omnicultural element of child-rearing: human affection. Infants in the unsung-to, unplayed-with, unloved group failed to thrive; many died. Clinically, it seems, there is no substitute for love, and no love as pure and sustaining as motherlove. Indeed, mothers generally teach us how to love. If we think back to the very first time our wee brains became aware of love, with its almost physical warmness, its sense of security, and our feeling of gratitude at being its recipient, we'll probably remember that the First Lover, who showed us this new thing in a way that left an eternal impression, was our mother. Maybe we felt the first rays of this sunshine on our soul as she pushed us through a still summer night to get an ice-cream cone, or when she picked sweet backyard clover to make us a flower necklace, or when, just the moment we thought the little piggies were dead meat, she reassured us, covers to our chins, that all the huffing and puffing in Wolfistan couldn't blow their little house down.
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