Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Years ago, a very good friend of mine confided to me that for span of several years, while her children were very young, she was a cow. Not a female person unfortunately inclined to behave badly to others, but an actual cow.
I was in my early twenties at the time and generally clueless when it came to relationships between mothers and their very young children. My relationship with my own mother was strained, at best, and I didn’t yet have children of my own. So, while this revelation of my friend’s was remarkable enough to be remembered when so very many others were lost, at the time that she said it, I didn’t know what she meant. At least, I was aware that it didn’t really have to do with breastfeeding (maybe a little bit, at one time?) but it’s less obvious implications were beyond the reach of my capacity to understand – shadowy things, less substantial than smoke and just as difficult to grasp.
I do get it now. I have had very young children and there were days when I, too, was a cow. Probably both sorts at once. I was a source of food, a propagator of another generation of my kind, a creature enslaved to a mundane daily ritual involving milk, nurturing and lots of walking; and when prevailing conditions were stormy, I turned my arse to the wind and rain and tried to keep the worst of the weather out of my face.
My children represent the best of my life. I love them dearly and nurturing them is my privilege. But at that time, I lost my higher functioning self, my last best version of myself, and became a cow for a while. As far as cows go, I think I did alright. I quite like cows actually. But I am forever grateful to those other mothers in my life whose care and conversation – whose presence in my kitchen on windy, rainy days – helped me to re-integrate my soft-eyed cow with a newer alternative version of thinking, mostly-human woman.