You stand in the check out line at the grocery store unconsciously rocking a can of tomato juice with the same tenderness you rocked your infant children. It is an occupational hazard; you automatically cuddle, hum to and rock anything larger than an egg. The sound of the word Mother sends your head re-actively twirling, whenever you hear any small voice call, regardless of the fact that it has been forty plus years since you heard your youngest call Mommy with the same desperation. The biological wiring whether used or not, remains in place. Still you respond. And should you, while driving, make a sudden stop, you will automatically put your arm across the passenger seat to protect the phantom child for whom your responsibility stopped years ago, that same child who now has a grown child of her own and thrusts her arm across passenger seats at sudden stops and rocks her a can of tomato juice in the grocery line. Basically, we are "wired" as mother and child, to interact in very specific ways and if you think it is going to be over in 18 years, maybe even 25, think again. You forgot to read the fine print in the contract.
Speaking of reading: A friend shared an article by Maria Barinaga in Science magazine of June 21, 2002 that deals with the symbiotic relationship between mother and fetus. Guess what, cells from a fetus can live on in the mother’s body for decades AFTER a pregnancy …and a mother’s cells can also survive for many years in her child. When this was first reported in the mid 1990’s scientists had a good laugh – ah come on, this can’t be true – but now it is general knowledge – except for people like me who don’t learn about it until later …and I find this absolutely amazing. How about you.
It is being speculated that cells from the infant may also contribute to some of the auto-immune disorders that are more common in women than men. It’s entirely possible that these cells perceive the foreign-ness of the mother and attack her tissues which then call her immune cells into battle and voila, an autoimmune disorder. It also works both ways: maternal cells were found in the inflamed muscle tissue of children and young adults with auto-immune disorders.
Some of these cells can be a benign presence, a self-perpetuating line of stem cells that can reproduce and even give rise to other types of cells, all without harming the mother and sometimes, this is what got me, even helping build tissue – one of the more dramatic examples cited, was that of a women with hepatitis C. ..a biopsy done on her liver revealed that a large part was male tissue surrounded by female tissue -- maybe the cells are responding to the disease, Tufts scientist Diana Biachi said. Wouldn’t it be amazing if one of the benefits of being pregnant is that you get, as a reward, a second population of stem cells?
To Any One of My Children:
There is a thin invisible seam between you and me so that distance makes no difference in our conversations, they go on in spite of our best attempts to leave each other behind. we are connected whether we like it or not made from the same earth, rising, like a lost civilization covered in jungle’s growth, buried in sand, quaked, shaken and flooded deep in the ocean’s water, still we rise up body through body, coming home to ourselves and each other The invisible seam between us is a scar, tougher than either of us.
It’s no news to us that science is showing that the boundaries of life are far less solid than thought to be – we are ourselves and each other – for better or worse.
