from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
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I look at the little people at home and wonder at how much they’ve grown from the little babies to these kids that threaten to ruin every furniture in the house. I sigh inwardly and long for their baby selves. Do not get me wrong. I am glad that those endless nights of feeding and burping and colic are over… it is the blissful unaware existence of a baby’s first months that I miss most. Who doesn’t?
I am guilty of spending hours just looking at my babies in their sleep — catching their sighs and fleeting smiles and absorbing the wonder of creation and half-forgetting the dirty laundry and dishes that nag at me from the corners of our tiny apartment.
Santino is regressing. He thinks we won’t adore him as much when the new baby arrives. He keeps asking me: Baby ko nimo, mama? I always try to reassure him that he will always be my baby. He would be comforted for the briefest time and speak in this sing-songy voice… then morph himself into a boa constrictor and wrap his chubby arms around me, never letting me go. It is both endearing and irritating especially now, that my groin aches from the added weight of my growing belly.
At night, I still watch them in their sleep… all growing limbs and the fuzz of babyhood gone but still looking like my innocent little angels. I make a silent prayer for the divinities to keep them that way — free from life’s harshness, safely cocooned in the magic of dreams and make-believe. I know it won’t be long… soon they will be out in the world and I can only look back and wish that they are still small enough to be carried in my arms.
