The Most Powerful Thing

by | Oct 24, 2002 | Genealogy, Notes while surfing

  1. by Lucas Heath Pastis
  2. Remember how powerful a photograph can be.
  3. More powerful than any bombs
  4. As powerful as LOVE
  5. (Kim Phuc)


  6. They say that love is so powerful, it can make you do crazy things. I have been lucky enough to live a crazy life. There have been loves won and loves lost and I am thankful for the experiences of both. I have also learned that there are all kinds of loves — the love between a man and woman, love for parents, love for friends, love for work, love for God and even love for money — but I have discovered that there is one love that is stronger than any other.
Ask any hunter who has come between a bear and its cub to quickly learn that the strongest love is the love between a mother and child. For someone who has never been a mother, it may be impossible to describe this love but I’m a writer, so please indulge me while I try.
Remember back to that first date with THE ONE who made your heart stop and flutter simultaneously. Everything — what you wear, what you say, how you smell, where you go — is vital. Everything about those first minutes will have an impact on the life of that important relationship.
Now that you remember that feeling, imagine looking down at your newborn child with your eyes clouded by tears and your judgment clouded by awe. Go back now to that first date and think about how important every little thing was. Everything is even more important in this new relationship. Everything you do, say and react to can affect not only your relationship with your child, but its very life! The weight of this responsibility is both frightening and overwhelming. It makes you so tongue-tied that nothing you say is what you really mean. You end up hearing your mother’s inappropriate words coming from your mouth as you struggle to say anything at all.
Unavoidably, this new love will do something absolutely gross but instead of being justifiably disgusted, you can’t help but laugh and later describe to anyone who you can force to listen just how cute and wonderful, or funny and hilarious, this little bundle of spit, muss and hair obviously is. And the combination of worry and adoration fluctuates repeatedly so that on the average day you’re at the brink of despair and on the verge of ecstasy some 86,399 times (or the rough equivalent of the number of seconds in a day).
As time goes by, you begin to get used to this feeling of being in love with your child. You even start to get comfortable with it. Alas. This is a mistake. Inevitably, you will either say or do something to make it cry. These tears are different from normal “I need something” tears, because you have caused them. This causes you physical pain and makes your heart ache, and you try anything and everything you can to make up to the child just to get back to the nearly unbearable state of love you were in before.
As the child grows, the importance of what you say, do, etc., becomes even stronger. Unlike when its a helpless newborn, the child also starts making its own decisions and you find yourself as a full emotional partner in the process. You have to watch with restraint as it seeks out playmates, loses a game, gets a job, falls in love and suffers from heartbreak. Every step forward he or she takes has you holding your breath and if you could, you know you surely would take those challenging steps instead.
Somehow his or her successes mean more than your own. Just as you physically feel your baby’s hurt when he or she falls trying to take those first steps on its own, you cry tears of happiness when the good stuff happens. You cheer for that important home run. You dance with delight at his or her graduation. You sigh with relief when your child become a parent itself. You have made it to adulthood again.
This cycle continues all over the world. While this love has been experienced by all of my female ancestors because it is life itself, it’s happening to me now, and perhaps even to you. This month when Valentine’s Day reminds us of the love in our lives, I can’t help but think of the most powerful love of all — the love between a mother and child.
      1. Love,
  1. April
  2. Heycuz, What’s New?: October 2002

http://heycuz.net/docs/NEW/2002_10_01_archive.html