Baby Contemplations

Happy New Year. I've been wanting to record here, perhaps selfishly, for sometime some literary leaps of genius from D.H. Lawrence which I read initially 5 or 6 years ago and recently felt a pull to revisit while in the new flush of motherhood. I think these passages -- written by a man (!) who had no children (!!) -- are so remarkably beautiful and embody the poetics of creation.

Dawn and sunset were the feet of the rainbow that spanned the day, and she saw the hope the promise. Why should she travel any further? ... the child she might hold up, she might toss the child forward... she forgot that she had watched the sun climb up and pass his way, a magnificient traveler surging forward. She forgot the moon had looked through a window of the high, dark night and nodded like a magic recognition, signalled her to follow. Sun and moon travelled on, and left her, passed her by, a rich woman enjoying her riches. She should go also. But she could not go when they called because she must stay home now. With satisfaction she relinquished the adventure to the unknown. She was bearing her children. If she were not the wayfarer to the unknown, if she were arrived now, settled in her builded house, a rich woman, still her house was full of the echos of journeying. She was a door and a threshold, she herself. Through her another soul was coming, to stand upon her as upon a threshold, looking out, shading it's eyes for the direction to take...

She was absorbed in the child now... she was willing to postpone all adventure into the unknown realities. She had the child, her palpable and immediate future was the child. If her soul had found no utterence, her womb had...

The baby was complete bliss and fulfillment. Her desires sunk into abeyance, her soul was in bliss over the baby. Her imagination was all occupied here. She was a mother. It was enough to handle the new little limbs, the new little body, hear the new little voice crying in the stillness. All the future rang to her out of the sound of her baby's crying and cooing, she balanced the coming years of life in her hands, as she nursed the child. The passionate sense of fulfillment, of the future germinated in her, made her vivid and powerful. All the future was in her hands, in the hands of a woman. She seemed to be in the fecund storm of life, every moment was full and busy with productiveness to her. She felt like the earth, the mother of everything.

~ D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow