Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

She lay back faint, exhausted, smiling.

“Place him here beside me,” she whispered, and I did it.

He lay against her milk-white breast, dark and black-eyed. His mother rested her eyes on him. She touched his black hair with her white fingers.

“He must wear the red coat,” I said, smiling at the sight. “He is far too dark for the white.”

“He is like his father and I am satisfied,” she said simply.

Then her husband came in and I withdrew myself.

Last night after the child’s birth I stood beside my husband in our son’s room. Together we looked out of the open window into the moonlit night. The air was very clear, and our little garden was like a painting, brushed in black and white. The trees stood pointed against the sky, ebony tipped with the silver of the moon.

Behind us our son lay sleeping in his bamboo bed. He is growing too big for it now, and as he slept he flung out his arms, and his hands struck softly against the sides. He is a man altogether these days! We looked at each other in pride, my husband and I, as we heard his strong, sturdy breathing.

And then I thought of the little new-born child, and how already he looked like my mother, whose life went out as his began. I said softly with a faint sadness,

“With what pain of separation has the child of our brother and our sister taken on his life! The separation of his mother from her land and her race; the pain of his father’s mother, giving up her only son; the pain of his father, giving up his home and his ancestors and the sacred past!”

But my husband only smiled. He put his arm about my shoulders. Then he said gravely,

“Think only of this — with what joy of union he came into the world! He has tied together the two hearts of his parents into one. Those two hearts, with all their difference in birth and rearing — differences existing centuries ago! What union!”

Thus he comforted me when I remembered past sadness. He will not allow me to cling to anything because it is old. He keeps my face set to the future. He says,

“We must let all that go, my Love! We do not want our son fettered by old, useless things!”

And thinking of these two, of my son and his cousin-brother, I know that my husband is right — always right!