mama says om theme: life

She stepped up to the podium that day carrying what looked like a miniature black suitcase and explained to us how she'd gone to the biology department to borrow something for her speech. As she spoke, she carefully opened the case and gingerly removed the contents. Slowly, she began unwrapping the mysterious item as she gave further detail about the endangered animal species she had based her speech on. At last she revealed a delicate, spotted egg to the class. The egg of an endangered bird! We were stunned that she'd been able to talk anyone in the biology department into allowing her to take the valuable egg off their premises.

She asked if we'd like to see it close up. We nodded in silence and she stepped forward, catching the corner of the table with her hip. In slow-motion, she fell forward and the fragile egg went flying out of her hand. A collective gasp of horror went up from the class as it hit the linoleum floor and shattered into a puddle of shell and yolk. No one breathed. We watched her reaction, expecting her to run crying out of the room, but to our amazement she composed herself and returned to the lectern.

She gave us a moment to let the shock wear off and then surprised us again. The egg was not an unusual egg after all. Just an ordinary bird's egg she'd found near her dorm on campus. We were relieved but perplexed. She asked us why we were so upset when we thought it was an endangered species she had just destroyed. After all, it was just an egg. Not a living thing. She was leading us down the path of a totally different subject we had not seen coming. The true topic of her speech: abortion.

She had a point. Why did we panic when she dropped what we thought was an egg containing an endangered animal? It wasn't fully developed yet. It hadn't hatched. If we acknowledged that given time and left uninterrupted it had the potential to grow into a full-fledged bird, how would that translate when it came to a human fetus? An animal with a soul?

Years later when I heard the heartbeats of each of my three children at just six weeks of pregnancy and felt life fluttering within me a few weeks later, I knew that my body was no longer just mine. It was a vessel for their bodies. They had their own hearts, their own tiny hands with unique fingerprints already forming. They had all the ingredients needed to create the beautiful people they are today. All they needed was time.



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