Chapter 123அதிகாரம் 123 வளர்ப்பு Parenting

A mother’s breast is the shape that fits the child’s mouth; the child’s mouth shapes the breast.

Once he has lifted a child onto his own back, a man finds the days he slept on his mother’s back far away.

The hand that braided the plait has done its work, yet every day tenderness tends the braid and binds it again.

When a child who knows nothing yet begins to walk, the hand it holds is its ground, its only ground.

Rocking the cradle for a baby who would not sleep, the mother lost her own sleep.

A child’s walking comes from the hand that let go, not from the hand that held: know this.

For an infant that takes in no words, that learns what is done and lives by it, the mother tongue is doing.

He does not know the pain of a mother’s fingers until the day an infant grips his own finger; on that day he knows the pain of a mother’s fingers.

An infant’s grip, held hour after hour, leaves the finger aching.

When one of the two hands that rock a cradle is missing, the infant knows it by the way the cradle rocks.

A seed that falls in its mother’s shade rots; let it fly off on its own to far ground, and it sprouts.