by Corinne Zaugg

The arrival of a child in the family throws family plans and organizations up in the air. In fact, little care is taken of the newborn whether it is day or night to satisfy his needs for food, cuddles, sleep and wakefulness. For new parents, perhaps for the first time in their lives, it is a question of living not according to one's own timetable but of following that of another. Entering a new temporal dimension, marked not by predefined appointments and timetables, but by a series of more or less long and different moments every day, which are modeled on the needs of this very small new member of the family. it is a very difficult and delicate step to make. Especially for the mother, who often, until a moment before becoming a mother, was a young woman dedicated to a profession and placed in a working and productive context. Her motherhood catapults her after only nine months of preparation, into a life completely different from the one she has known so far. A life that often takes place far from those who were part of it until the day before, more isolated and solitary than the previous one and which raises, day after day, new questions and unexpected events that no one has bothered to explain to her or prepare her to live . Also because today the life and education of a young girl is almost in no way different from that of a boy. Same schools, same use of free time, same freedom, same involvement in household chores, same study opportunities and (almost) identical job prospects. Until the idea of ​​starting a family takes hold. Suddenly, at that moment, the young woman realizes that it is her and only her that the question of motherhood is posed. There will certainly be two people wondering about the choice, but it will be the woman who bears the consequences. Consequences that have a profound impact not only on her life, but even on her flesh. For the first time in her life she will have the experience of being an instrument - a docile instrument - who makes her own life available for the love of another. An experience that will be imprinted forever in her mind and in her flesh and which will make her, from now on, a different creature. Among the infinite miracles that the birth of a child brings with it, that of allowing the mother to make a gift of love for another seems to me to be the most beautiful and extraordinary. The one capable of revolutionizing one's entire personal history and consequently also the family history.
Therefore, starting from conception, the woman's willingness to become an instrument, to let herself be inhabited by the new life she holds in her womb, letting the latter guide her steps and her choices. Not even the moment of giving birth will be her choice (if the birth occurs naturally). The child will announce when the time has come.
Thus begins that long journey that lasts a lifetime and which inextricably links the life of a mother to that of her children. A path that will lead her from now on to follow the paths of her life in a different way. With those rhythms and those times that we talked about at the beginning and which, for years, will no longer belong to her. Moments marked by tears and meals, illnesses and smiles, small steps and big discoveries. From slow but steady progress. And which will ensure that while the city runs alongside her with the usual frenzy, the latter will no longer belong to her because she will live in another time. New, like the look of her child when she looks at the world for the first time, discovering it.
This is, at least, what I wish for every mother. And also to every father. To be able to fully grasp the unique and unrepeatable opportunity that every child gives us: that is, to reset our lives starting from him. And don't let the opposite happen: that we are the ones who impose our speed and our disenchanted gaze on our children. The time of our frenzy which tends to make every day the same as the next will have to be replaced with a new calendar. A calendar that returns to giving value to time as the slow passing of hours, days and seasons. A new time, where there is space to look at the sky, walk through the streets, speak to those you meet on the street, give crumbs to the birds, look at yourself in the pools after the storm. A time to make peace with what surrounds us, which is now no longer the simple curtain on which our life unrolls, but acquires the characteristics of the world where our son lives and grows. A friendlier world. A more human world. A child is a magnificent opportunity to make peace with the world. To commit to making it better. Above all, it is an opportunity worth seizing. To really change. To change inside. And make that state of grace that made us say that first yes to life last forever, that first yes that made us become an instrument of love for another.