By RENEE GLEMBIN

Sunday, May 12, 2002

No one ever told me before I became a mother, that by virtue of giving birth I would be completing my initiation into a silent (and many times, not so silent) sorority of suffering.

I found out, however, the way most mothers do. After looking for the first time into my first newborn baby's creamy black eyes minutes after she breathed her first breath and cried her first cry, after I touched her tender, stocking-capped head and pressed my lips against her soft, wet cheek, I knew.

And I wept for the knowing. From that moment on, I understood with excruciating clarity that if anything happened to this child, if anything or anyone ever hurt her or threatened her health and happiness in any way, it would mean the death of me.

I understood that the possibility of this coming harm would hover over me for the rest of my life.

I also understood, in a new and alarming way, as I watched other mothers' children in the media and in the real-life dramas playing out around me -- battling cancers, succumbing to accidents, surviving abuses, homelessness and lost innocence -- that this hovering sense of conceivable wounds would now and forever transcend my own lineage. I began to ache in places I didn't know could ache.

With my first baby's first smile, I became a true ordained sister of potential impending sorrows. I became linked eternally with so many other sisters across the globe who knew what it was like to give so much of yourself, and to give so much more than you thought you could ever give, to bring a life into this world. I knew what it was like to accept onto yourself another life, as if its life's blood coursed through your veins. It would now be yours to nurture and guide, celebrating each step, agonizing each fall.

Of course, this process begins during pregnancy, or during a lengthy, topsy-turvy adoption process. It's a cautious and hope- filled expectancy that things will go well, as they "should," as we feel they deserve to.

But when the child finally arrives, either safely intact or traumatically fragmented, the weight of the responsibility a mother feels to protect, defend and support her child is frightening in its immensity and bewildering in its depth.

I know fathers can feel a nearly equal portion of this weight. I know that good fathers, such as my husband, want to protect their children and feel their children's pains and losses as if they were their own.

I also know that childless men and women are not made of stone. Their hearts can and do break for injustices, for babies left in garbage cans, for children struggling with terminal illnesses, for senseless acts of terror and blatant disregards for life.

But, I tell you, I did not know hurt until I had my first child. Hurt was something "other," something distant, even if it was sufficiently personal. But once I became a mother, hurt or the mere implication of it became integral, particularly if it involved one of my children.

Of course, there are aberrations. There are, and always have been, mothers who abuse, neglect, malign and even kill their children. This despicable fact is not unique to the times in which we live, and nothing, save the detriment of our own children, causes the mothers in my sorority more pain, disgust or sympathy. We shake our heads, say our prayers, hold our own children more closely and chastise ourselves more harshly for our own moments of maternal exasperation.

Nevertheless, we move forward. We must. Our children, who belong to tomorrow, demand it. We do this even though in that tomorrow, evil men in secret caves may plot the demise of all we hope for our children, even though buildings and dreams may once again collapse into clouds of black ash, even though any number of enemies may lurk menacingly about our children's feet as they play.

Despite this subjection, despite the sleepless nights, despite increased sensitivity to cruelties of every variety, mothers still give birth every minute of every day. Most of these births are products of quite deliberate intent. Women often go to great lengths to become mothers because on some instinctive level, far beyond the basic need to proliferate the human race, they know that inexplicable joy and insurmountable pain are two sides of the same coin. One simply cannot exist without the other.

And, so, as I lay my head upon the pillow each night, every one of my exhalations is a psalm of gratitude that my four children have made it through yet another day, unscathed by this world's unpredictable and frequently frightening detours.

And I ponder how, like that proverbial coin, motherhood itself has opposing, life-altering sides. It has made me wickedly strong in some places and dangerously weak in others. It has made me sickeningly egotistical and embarrassingly humble. It has broken me to pieces and made me completely whole.

I fall asleep knowing that for me, and for the millions of others in my sorority, there could be no other way, no other life worth living.

Renee Glembin is a Milwaukee area writer.