I saw a whale in the fjord.
A large body in the water. Quiet, heavy and effortless for its size. It broke the surface, appeared for a moment and disappeared again, as if it had never quite allowed itself to be held. All that remained was the water, which slowly closed behind it — and a heavy exhalation that spread like rings in the water.
I saw a whale in the fjord.
A large body in the water. Quiet, heavy and effortless for its size. It broke the surface, appeared for a moment and disappeared again, as if it had never quite allowed itself to be held. All that remained was the water, which slowly closed behind it — and a heavy exhalation that spread like rings in the water.
It stuck with me.
There is something about the whale that reminds me of my own body right now. It is also large, also impossible to avoid. Something that is just there, without explanation or urgency.
I am pregnant and expecting my second child. It’s a body in motion against something I can’t control. I can feel it all, but not control the shape. Don’t see how it turns out.
I know it’s diapers, sleepless nights, breastfeeding, endless worries, and the little daily rituals that keep a new life going. I’ve tried it before. And yet it also feels like standing in the middle of something unfathomably large.
Because what kind of society am I giving birth to my child into?
Women are encouraged again and again to bear more children. As a society, we worry about declining birth rates and the future. But a society must also ask itself how it accepts the lives it wants more of.
We talk a lot about systems. About institutions. About frames. And currently also a lot about those who have to bear them: the educators, of whom there is a shortage, and who work under conditions and wages that are discussed again and again in the columns here in Sermitsiaq. These are not abstract issues. They have faces. They have hands to hold small children when parents go to work. They have voices that are supposed to comfort, set boundaries, create security.
But the system sometimes seems like a big, tired body breathing heavily and sighing slowly, completely unresponsive to those trying to stay afloat.
I think of the whale again.
It moves through the fjord with a natural weight. It is not fast, not efficient in the modern sense. But it is adapted to its element. It knows how to be in the water.
And I don’t always know if our systems are equally adapted to the children who will grow up in them.
There is a strange tension in it all. On the one hand, an enormous love and sense of responsibility that arises when you have a child. On the other hand, a quiet uneasiness about whether there are enough hands to receive the child when he moves out of the home and into the community.
The close and the big are inextricably linked here. Like the fjord and the sea. Like me and the whale I saw.
I don’t know if I felt like the whale at that moment.
Maybe I did.
Big and slow moving through the great unknown, something I can’t quite fathom. At the same time as I am dependent on the currents that I have no control over.
There is something comforting in that image. And somewhat worrying.
Because the whale manages because the ocean is big enough for it. The question is whether our society is also spacious enough for the lives we bring into it.
I still think about the whale in the fjord.
And on the child who will soon be breathing outside of me.
