The Mummification Of My Favourite Feminists

... and then there were babies.

The smell of them, their wrinkly bits, their purely instinctive need to suckle (even at the notion of a nicotine-stained forefinger) -- they are designed to turn just about anyone into the kind of person that a helpless being can trust.

Even the most effusive feminists.

A friend who swore she never wanted children now has two, and can talk only of them. She recalls her repeated rants of no-kids-no-kids-no-kids as a lifestyle choice ago, with a sheepish laugh that writes off instantly any kind of value it once held. It used to bother her when children whinged. Now it bothers her when her two-year-old son calls her Mama instead of Mummy.

A friend who said she never wanted to be a mother, never even wanted to be married, has held up without one complaint as her insides for months got stepped on, moved about and redecorated by the feet of a child who, to make his grand entry into the world, decided to throw her for one last loop by putting her through emergency surgery.

I wonder if these children will ever know how proud and how strong their mothers are. I wonder if they will ever truly appreciate the changes they managed to effect.

These women swore like sailors, Kilkenny cans in one hand, smoking cigarette in the other. These women frequently told off men who wrote them off as pretty things. These women ran and swam distance -- to the moon and back -- to keep in shape. These women drove 16 hours cross country with no rest, these women suffered late nights, cleaned up the results of too-much-alcohol, they travelled across continents to make their careers happen.

They are my heroes. They should be their sons', too.

My only hope is that their mummification does not banish them into pyramids, reduced to mere consorts of another man's empire.

Lord knows, they moved mountains to get where they are.