Motherhood as First Language

Motherhood as First Language


The mother's tongue speaks
and the realm we are returned to
with our pregnancy
and giving birth;
returned as transported visitors,
gone through the portal,
reborn we birth there,
made changeling--
all of these,
but not always the mystical journey;
sometimes we returned as kidnapped,
hostage in a world of children.

The mother's tongue is the language
of that realm'
our voice as both rule and guide,
heeded and non-heeded,
some sound we outselves can hardly hear,
and often voice beyond sound;
gestures and sensations,
the things at the tip of our tongues
we cannot say.

It is the language of the female body.
We laugh, my friends,
as we become "old mothers"
in our late 30's, even 40's.
Nursing babies, we bookish women,
we near spinsters, laugh
because we could not have known,
living so long in our heads,
how powerful our bodies could be,
once they had made other bodies.


Heid E. Erdrich.....from the preface to The Mother's Tongue