Larger Than Life

by Jodi Picoult

When the matriarch is gone, so is the herd’s collective memory.

The job of scientists is to study wildlife but not to interfere with it. That’s why we are called naturalists. Yet there have been too many times in the past year when I’ve wondered if that might just be an excuse for not having to be held responsible when something goes terribly wrong.

The matriarch is a knot that holds together a rope made of many strings. Cut the rope below the knot, and it unravels.

There is a reason people say being a mother is the hardest job in the world: You do not sleep and you do not get vacation time. You do not leave your work on your desk at the end of the day. Your briefcase is your heart, and you are rifling through it constantly. Your office is as wide as the world, and your punch card is measured not in hours but in a lifetime.

She was a part of me, and if you carved away a part of yourself, you bled to death.

As it turns out, you can love someone too much. Then, when they leave, your heart goes missing. And no one can survive that great a loss.

In Tswana, there are two ways to say goodbye. Tsamaya sentle means “go well.” Sala sentle means “stay well.” It depends on whether you are the one leaving or the one being left behind.

The calf scrambled beneath the safe haven of his mother. When you are truly, deeply scared, that’s the only place you want to be.

I had to learn how to be a mother before I realized how lucky I am to be a child.