The Things We Don't Do. Andres Neuman

at me and understands that this child is the same one I will be, the one I have not yet been, the one I could not be, and that it is my face, identical and different and that I have just given birth to myself, and that is why the woman I loved and who loved me to the depths of a quickening night is crying with me, today or tomorrow, embracing the nurses.

a mother ago

      I entered the hospital filled with hatred and wanting to give thanks. How fragile is anger. We could shout, hit, or spit at a stranger. The same person whom, depending on their verdict, depending on whether they tell us what we are desperate to hear, we would suddenly admire, embrace, swear loyalty to. And that love would be a sincere one.

      I went in not thinking anything, thinking about not thinking. I knew my mother’s present, my future, depended on the toss of a coin. And that that coin wasn’t in my hands, perhaps it was in nobody’s, not even those of the doctor. I have always thought that the absence of god relieves us of an intolerable burden. Yet more than once, when going in or out of a hospital, I have longed for divine mercy. Multitudinous, full of seats, corridors, hierarchies, and rituals of hope, silent on their upper floors, hospitals are the closest thing to a cathedral we unbelievers can step into.