I was going to write...

I was going to write about how strong and capable and intelligent I feel. Somehow, that seems too intimate and confessional. And yet - there's this image on a card that a friend gave me which hangs on a bulletin board near my desk. In it, an African woman is gazing at the camera, a still smile, her look direct and solid. The baby's eyes are huge, wide as if it were falling, but he is nestled in her patterned sling, close to chest and neck.

The mother's gaze is striking - it encapsulates how I feel, poised for change and challenge. I sense a fierce pride. I remember talking to the giver of the card, over a year and more ago, saying, to myself more than her, "There's a fierce pride that comes with being a single mom." That fierce pride gives out so many other varieties of strength. No adversity, economic or social, wears away the fine, fast threads of this web, and every time I feel challenged, by fatigue, or by medical or financial worries, I lean back and my son and I are cradled in this sling together - the fierce pride and strength sling.

Fellow humans, far away and not too far away from my own home are beset by real suffering, genuine material and psychic loss. Degrees of pain and suffering are relative, I know, and different people address obstacles with varying resources for recovery.

I think that there's a certain amount of self-pity that's tolerable, after which, when on the receiving end of an incessant drone of pathetic melancholy and whining, the listener just becomes detached. If the speaker doesn't care about you, the listener, in any measurable way, then there seems to be little left to salvage in the exchange of thoughts and feelings.

People who say "I'm fine," when they're visibly upset, or others who communicate one thing but expect a particular script of response are bound to end up miserable. Any words of condolence, comfort, or empathy offered have little effect when the victim of self-loathing is determined to steep in despair. I say, let them have at it. If contentment is something that they're capable of embracing, they'll find it eventually, though most likely in a source of questionable substance.

Contentment - that's the perfect word, isn't it, when you're looking at an image of mother and child, close together, one holding or resting with the other. As part of our Mother's Day extravaganza, and in the absence of any kind of art curriculum for kindergarteners, I brought three images to my students and asked for their impressions, likes, preferences, and so forth.

There was a Mary Cassatt, a Klimt, and a Renoir. It was so lovely to see which student was drawn to each, and to hear the reasoning behind their preferences - some responses were emotional, some more aesthetically-minded. Last week, as we were walking through the school's "Chicago Fair," one of my students shouted out "Ms. Welvers! Ms. Welvers!" A large framed print I had never noticed before hung in the hallway two flights above our classroom: it was the same Mary Cassatt painting of the mother bathing her child. They're both looking down, but do you see their hands? Child's hand, on the mother's knee, confident that it is there for support, mother's hands holding the child's foot, her hip, expertly completing a familiar, loving routine.

My son honors me when he reaches for my hand to bridge a path, walking between one chair and the window. Walk past the window and you'll see - mother and child looking down, our hands and our ways of resting just so.