Sunday book pick: A mother’s beating heart is at the centre of the anthology ‘Stories of Motherhood’

The 2012 anthology, Stories of Motherhood, edited by Diana Secker Tesdell, opens with a most extraordinary story. “Blood and Its Relationship to Water” (1987) by Ron Carlson overturns the three most sacred tenets of motherhood – the birth, the female body, and a woman’s divine transformation into Mother. The story, at first, centred around a woman’s instinctual devotion for the (adopted) baby, takes a shocking turn when the father steps into the mother’s role one night, offering to feed and clean the baby, while she catches up on her much-needed sleep. In the dark hours of the night, the father initiates himself into motherhood, aided by the baby’s skin, piss, and blood. Unlike any “motherhood” story I have read before, this remained my favourite till the end.

Comfortably settled in by the time I finished reading the story and my excitement about the other stories already piqued, I was glad to find that the rest of the book lived up to, and exceeded, my expectations.

The mother and the child

Being a mother is a complicated affair – there are moments of joy, but there are also long hours of anxiety and despair, there is fear of failing, of knowing you have failed, long years of grieving, for...

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