Translation Exercise: 「わたしが殺せないところまで成長した子供よ。ありがとう」

「わたしが殺せないところまで成長した子供よ。ありがとう」, from 『女のセリフ１２０』 by 伊藤雅子 ( 未来社, 1995)

"Thank You, My Child, for Growing So Big I Can't Kill You"

The rest of Hoshiko Kanazawa's poem, "Kisetsu", continues: "To protect you meant that I could kill you - what a weight to bear."

Agata Hikari's short story, "The A-Ha-Ha Expedition", features similar words: "Newborns... seem like they could be smashed to pieces by the slight pressure of an overeager embrace. I shudder to think that death is, in reality, so near at hand - my hand  could bring about such horror."

She continues, "I wonder if I could properly embrace them, if I could hug them without suffocating them."

But Yuriko Oka expresses a different point of view in  "I Am 12 Years Old": "What plagues me most since the death of my son is the thought that I didn't hug him tightly enough."

These words run completely contrary to each other, but both strike a chord in a mother's heart. You fear holding them too tightly, you blame yourself for maybe not embracing them tightly enough. A mother who has devoted herself to the upbringing of her child  is always wavering between these two extremes. 

The weight of the child in my arms is the weight of that life. Or perhaps, for this mother who hangs her own life on that of her child, it is the weight of self-judgement.