The Mother

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume IX, Issue 3, 1 July 1916, Page 168

The Mother

I sit to rest on a tussock of grass after climbing a high, rocky hill. Below me lies stretched for miles, a sandy plain. Scattered here and there, with good distances between, can be seen groups of trees showing theie are homesteads nestled m their midst.. The river shines like silver, to the light Billowing mountains rise tier above tier on every side of the sandy plain. The mountains, but for their size, lemind me of the way children love to pottr sand into heaps of all the shapes that the fantastical mind of a child can devise. Scraggy heads of stone peep out from the sandy hills, except ceitam ones, that have the evenness that sand has when poured fioni a height and allowed to fall as it will. On the highest mountains m front and to the left, snow nestles m the crevices but wheie I sit the sun pours down its rays m all the wajmth of a summers day. Nearer to hand and just below me is a little cottage home with two children. One' a little toddler with all the

ceaseless energy we older people envy . In and out he goes hunting for all kinds of treasures to lay at his mother's feet. Some of them aie giubby — eaith-coveied bottles laid sometimes on chair cover or couch or floor whichever the mood of the moment fancies. Oh ! the infinite patience and intuit on the mother needs to t? y to follow the woi kings of the child mind through all the gmbbiness so loved of little childien. Would that we could read, as God can, the thinkings of these small minds. Would their puiity and detachment from the gnibbiness of life lift us to higher things ? The other child is a six months old baby, film of flesh and the purity of skin denoting natures own food and health. She smiles at me — a strangei- — it is a little wavering at first as she watches my face. She wants reassuring that I am going to respond, then, m answer to my smile her's beams foith m its full beauty — the darling. Oh, the straight look of those baby eyes. Theic is no need of shutteis

to keep anyone from looking into its soul. There is no soiledness to hide. There is no monster pain lurking there. The mother should be the "joyful mother" of such children, but pain is m the eyes and a hardness about the mouth and a sharpness m the tones of the voice. I smiled and said, " Hoav lovely to see the unveiled look m a baby's eyes." There is no reseive there — the pity that it should need to come. Presently the shutter s will come down and even the mother cannot peep in — the individual soul. Every child born into this world has its individual right and entrance can only be won, never forced. Those sbxitters will only lift at the call of love and only one can see — as now we see — into ''.he unveiled soul. What was that understanding look that

leaped from the mother's eyes to mine ? We came very near together, my sister — woman and I. What soitl said to soul only God will know, but the look of pain m the eyes was less and hope shone there. The echo of her words, "I had not need to tell you, you knew without, and only you could have understood," made music m my heait as I caught the last glimpse of her and her children as they watched me until I disappeared from sight. The wind has risen, black clouds are overhead with dashes of the bluest of blue sky peeping through. The birds are singing m a minor key, as they do when the sky is overcast. I must on my Way again. A. E. Ciiappell, Plunket Nurse for Teviot and Central Otago.