Lightly Child, Lightly.

Posted on by Live & Learn

But I also knew that the most intimate relationship is not mutual. It is one-way: the mother’s relationship to the child. The best part of my life had been this animal intimacy, the secretion of my milk into this body, the teaching how to lift food to the mouth, how to speak, how to show love according to the feeling of love, how to put on a shoe, how to pick up a spoon, how to wipe one’s own tears, how to piss and shit and be clean. Nothing, nothing in the world like that. That absolute authority of which the baby must be convinced in order to feel safe, separate from the mother’s body. The honor the mother must give the baby, when the baby is ready to know that her absolute authority was never real. The careful timing of the revelation that, baby, you are alone, as alone as anything can be. How lucky you were, baby, to have been a baby with its mother. Now you are ready to start living life in the imagination, to start imagining your way back to every good feeling you don’t quite remember from the days of milk.

— Sarah Manguso, Liars: A Novel (Hogarth, July 23, 2024)

Notes:

  1. Book Reviews of “Liars”
  2. Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

17 thoughts on “Lightly Child, Lightly.”

      1. No, Thank you.
        Don’t need that now. Though I did enjoy a good one on divorce and marriage not too long ago. Maggie Smith, You Could Make this Place Beautiful, A Memoir.

        If it’s written with the purpose of learning and recovering from a bad marriage or a divorce, it can be tolerable.

        Any other context, no.

      1. Thank you for taking me back to that post Christie. Days of Milk. One of my sons, 28 years old, 6’5″, when ever he eats or enjoys something tremendously he says, “as good as mother’s milk.” No idea what this kid remembers. I only breast fed for a year each. Best days. What the mother experiences is beyond words. To this day if I hear a baby suckle, it brings back the same sensation. And the other hardly talked about sensation is that the mother feels/experiences 15 minutes before the baby even wakes up or askes to feed.
        Thank you ❤️

        1. Your welcome…one of your son’s 6’5″ Wow! Of course he had wonderful parents and sounds like your Wonderful cooking contributed to His Height & Health!

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