Wedding Present

I attended a wedding yesterday, and whilst the ceremony and the reception were fine and dandy, the most meaningful moment for me personally occurred when a friend of mine who I have not seen in a while shared her experiences with me as a new mother.

She was quite open about sharing the full pallet of the emotions she had ran through over the past year and change, from joy to anxiety, excitement to exhaustion. I was quite touched by both her candor and the utter conviction in her aura when she stated that it was all worth it and she could no longer imagine herself as anything but a parent, despite her previous doubts about being a mother. As she said those words, I instantly felt some kind of connection to something beyond the tasteful courtyard we happened to be holding this conversation in, but I could not put my finger on it.

Later, after we had parted ways and I returned to sit down to a king's repast of the finest meats and cheeses, I found myself in a reverie of sorts between sips of champagne and bites of well-seasoned chicken. What had my friend's words triggered in me, I pondered.

After a time, it came to me. When my friend spoke, her words went beyond her relationship with her own sons, but pointed to something more universal, that being the love of mothers for their children. I imagined this universal aspect of what she was saying as a golden thread, binding one generation of humanity to the next throughout the ages. I also began to think of a book that I had come across recently, "The Seven Daughters of Eve", which uses DNA analysis to trace all modern Europeans to a mere seven ancestor-mothers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Daughters_of_Eve)

I reflected that my friend had opened my eyes to her portion of the golden thread that can be traced all the way back to those seven women, which is a mind blowing concept, when you think about it. And finally, I thought, why does our Judeo-Christian worldview focus so much on Eve's Original Sin instead of Eve's (the scientific Eve that is) Original Love for her children, a love that connects us all?

Then I think someone urged me to dance floor, and I moved with abandon to the beat, knowing that somehow I had walked away with the best present at the wedding though I was only a guest.