Joyful Motherhood

Kevin and Mom enjoy a hike

When I gave birth to my son, Kevin, I felt a miracle pass through me. I felt divinity touch me with a kind hand and whisper its joy. I was humbled, awestruck and so overjoyed. A little miracle had emerged out of me, completely formed and so beautiful!

Kevin became my doorway to wonder. His curiosity was boundless and lured me into a special world of transformation.

I took time off work to spend with Kevin when he was young. We went on great trips, from the local mall, where we had a hot chocolate and played with Lego, to the local beach on the Fraser River, where we explored the rocks. When he was no more than three, I took him on endless adventures in the city and its surroundings. We didn’t have to go far. The mud puddles of a new subdivision after a rain were sufficient to keep our attention for dozens of minutes. We became connoisseurs of mud. The best kind was “chocolate mud,” with a consistency and viscosity that created the best crater when a rock was thrown into it. Kevin and I often explored the little woodland a block from our house. We were hunters. Gatherers. Magicians. We made “magic potions” out of nightshade flowers, fir and pine needles, loam and moss; then we fuelled our concoctions with the elixir of water from a stagnant pool.

Kevin around 2 years old

Being with my young son slowed my world and returned to me a great sense of wonder. A walk to the little store with young Kevin was an expedition. he’d amble, explore, poke, then suddenly squat and study something on the pavement that I’d missed.

Kevin brought me back to the ground, to the extra-ordinary mundane—to the quiet details and the fragrant light. Acting like a macro lens, he pointed me to the little things, Nature’s nuanced designs that I’d forgotten in the larger paradigms of my hurried life.

Kevin brought me back to the immediate, to Nature’s elegant silence and beauty. He showed me the fractal wonders of tree branches, exploding seeds, glorious reflections in puddles, strange mud waves and odd moss-covered rocks. We crouched in halted silence to watch a bee feast from a flower’s nectar then launch itself—a dirigible laden with pollen—into the sky. 

Kevin exploring the west coast 

We followed the brilliant Fibonacci spiral of a sunflower or the circular gossamer web of a spider, both mimicking the greater spiral of our own Milky Way Galaxy. We stuck our tongues out to taste the snow as it cascaded down in heaps or caught hexagonal snowflakes on our sleeves and sadly watched them melt. We stomped in road puddles or threw rocks and watched the circles of waves feed outward, changing the colour and texture of everything. We collected flotsam in nebulous forest pools and made magical potions. We wrote stories in the ocean sand, then leapt from dry rock to dry rock until the sea trapped us in its rushing embrace.

Water’s beauty spans the subtle dewdrops on a suburban lawn to the extravagant and powerful surges of a tropical sea.

Kevin swimming in Georgia Strait

“It’s hard to find anything more beautiful than dew on flower petals and leaves,” writes Masaru Emoto in The Secret Life of Water. “A single drop of dew falls off the tip of a sprouting leaf on a branch and makes its descent, through the forest canopy, and lands on the back of a frog ... Water spreads itself ... to shower love on the frog and the new sprout—and to be loved in return. Just as a mother instinctively loves her newborn, water in infancy is loved by all of nature.”

In his book The Holy Order of Water: Healing the Earth’s Waters and Ourselves William E. Marks writes, “The mysteries flowing from water are with us in many ways—in the life surrounding us; in thoughts generated by our water-filled minds; the smells and rhythms of our oceans; the soothing sounds of gurgling streams and fountains; the beat of our hearts; the gift of sight from our watery eyes; the ever-changing clouds above; the misty fog that lightly kisses our faces; the sight of an awe-inspiring tornado; the vortex swirl of water disappearing down a drain.”

Grad Kevin and proud Mom

Water is the bold light of change. Water is the deep purity of soul.

Water is the abiding mother. 

And to be a mother is to be blessed.



This is an adapted excerpt from "Water Is..." (Pixl Press), currently available on Amazon.com and other great bookstores near you.




Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of award-nominated speculative novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s recent book is the bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” (Mincione Edizioni, Rome). Her latest “Water Is…” is currently an Amazon Bestseller and NY Times ‘year in reading’ choice of Margaret Atwood.