XI
My son is growing up.
He has reddish-brown ringlets, his cheeks are vermilion, the blue of his eyes radiates seraphic calm. He is probably going to be very handsome. Often people stop me on the street to tell me how lovely he is, and for a moment I feel some pride.
He is beginning to show human traits; he talks, he expresses a desire to touch and possess things, and likes to listen to stories, which used to make no appeal: "And then, Mamma? Tell me, what next?..." I always begin by kissing him.
My heart has grown with him. I have just begun to feel that his existence is rooted in my own existence. What welds me to him are not only the pains I take for him, or my perpetual anxiety. I am welded to him by the kisses he already gives me. When he says "Mamma" in his inimitable way, I am proud and overwhelmed; when he puts his arms round my neck, it is as if I were usurping a reward too perfect for me.
The terror with which he filled me when he was so little and frail is disappearing. I have rocked him, watched over him and suckled him; he has strong legs and a strong body; nevertheless a much greater terror is growing in me.
The greatest terror of my life. To bring up a child, to hold in your hands not only what he will be, but what he may be; and to decree everything, the colors he looks at, the words he hears! To give birth a second time to a living creature. To be worthy of it....
And to have nothing to help you but a heart wise yet too intellectual, the heart of an adult.
To have this timid heart, the maternal heart, too prompt and misleading.
Not to have anything else!