A Moment to Marvel

Humans are astoundingly complex, and the way we’re shaped by our generation is merely a fragment of our complexity. As a mother and an adult, I’ve often lost myself in moments of marvel.

Both my children were born tongue-tied (my dad probably wondered why I hadn’t been born with such a gift for him), but until I became a mother, I’d never considered how many countless biological details have to come together perfectly to create human life before our flesh touches air.

I accidentally bloodied my first child’s nose on my first Mother’s Day as a mom, his first night home after his birth. My second child and I battled each other’s stubbornness early on when I realized he was the kind of child who slapped me in the face when I smacked his hand to keep him away from things like hot ovens and electrical outlets and when he realized I was the kind of mom who wouldn’t allow even his cute little toe to cross over a line once it had been drawn. I wonder how who I am and what I do will affect my children and their children.

My children were born in different states, played with kids whose skin was a different color than theirs in the church nursery, never knew life without computers, and traveled to almost half the U.S. states and eight different countries before they were 9 years old. As I mother them, I can draw limited lessons from my own childhood where the world was mostly our gravel road, my own family, and the nearby county seat with the population of 1700 people. I'm brought to silence as I consider how my dad’s mom must have experienced life with all changes of the 20^th century during her lifetime, 1901-1993. I remember how her most common summary of her life experiences was, “You just can’t even understand how different everything is now; I can’t even explain it.”

I’ve grown to know and care about friends in Ukraine who live in a country that bore the name of six different countries during the lifetime of my grandma who couldn’t put words to her U.S. experiences. I want to understand how politics, starvation, and wars from the last century along with their culture, families and experiences impact the lives of people who seem so very much like me, stemming from quite a different history on the other side of the world. I’m embarrassed about how little I still know of other peoples’ lives, experiences, and histories from thousands of other places on this earth we share.

All of humanity—strangers, friends, family, and I—have been scarred by addictions, illnesses, and sorrows and have known joy. Oh, how we hurt ourselves, each other, and how much we overcome.

I marvel at life, death, our world, each of our journeys, and the God I’ve known and who has walked with me from childhood.

If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. -Psalm 139: 8-15 


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com