Advent Calendar – 14 December
Nativity Stories: Mary
When I hold him in my arms, so small, so fragile, so beautiful, it all seems incredible. I knew it was happening all right. My mother had told me it would be a pain like I’d never known but that I’d get through it. And she was right. I didn’t think I could survive it but I did and just as well. He’s a hungry lad. He needed me to make it through.
But nothing was easy. Joseph had to go to Bethlehem and when he told me I said I was due or so the midwife thought. He said he’d get back in time but I didn’t think he would so I just said I’d come with him and then whatever happened we’d be together.
I thought the journey would never end, day after day getting up with the birds singing, walking till the light started to fail, no-one else around we really knew, just the odd distant relative of Joseph heading the same way. I was sore all over. We’d only just got there when I knew he was on his way, and there was nothing for it but to stay put where we were, sharing straw with everyone’s donkeys and the innkeeper’s cow. She called the local midwife who gave Joseph a huge row for bringing me in my condition, but she was kind to me after that, and held my hand, and maybe it was her who really got me through. Joseph was too nervous to be much use.
He’s so lovely, the baby, all wrapped up against the cold of winter. “What have you got to wrap him in?” the midwife snapped at Joseph.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“I’ll be back,” she said, and went to see Rachel, the innkeeper, who gave her some old sheet that maybe a hundred traders have slept under. But it’s warm enough for him, my boy, my only boy, Jesus, my beloved boy, lying there on straw where Rachel usually puts the food out for her cow when there’s no grass outside.
I can’t believe it really. Being a mother always seemed so grown-up, way beyond my life. And yet when he looks up it’s me he sees, and he knows who I am, and his mouth and little fingers reach out for my breast and he drinks, and I’m not a girl any more, even though I’m small.
It’s happened just like the stranger said. Could that all still be true? My baby came like others do with pain for me. The midwife said I was lucky, he was healthy. How could such a tiny thing, all red and rumpled, crying and messing, be king of all his people, Saviour of the world? I’m too tired to work it out. I’ll sleep, and Joseph will wake me if Jesus needs me, if I don’t hear him crying first.
Elizabeth Catlett, Mother and Child, 1944