microchimerism and motherhood

I often say it with absolute conviction that Mithi is in my blood and flesh now. That she is in me and I always feel it, can meditate sometimes and feel her breath on my face, can hold her hands and do everything I used to do with her.

I have never felt like dusting her photo frame everyday and celebrating her birth and death anniversaries in any particular manner. I never felt like doing any charity on her name though we do some work of that sort. Charity I don't believe in but that is another story.

I was talking about how I feel Mithi is a part of me and I feel it almost literally. I have always remembered how the concept of 'microchimera' works, I had just read about microchimera in our Genetics course and it had intrigued me a lot but it was yet a concept that was not researched enough to establish things further.

But now when I read this article about how microchimerism can express itself it is a sense of déjà vu. Especially when a study suggests how mammary glands can be manipulated by the resident pluripotent foetal cells.

I will tell you what my housemaid who used to help me with housekeeping chores and belonged to Munda tribe of Jharkhand, used to tell me. I trust tribal wisdom a lot as they live so close to nature and follow the rhythms of nature closely, like the back of their hands. She used to tell me how the breast milk starts secreting when the child is hungry or when you are thinking of the child. I don't know what conclusion to draw as I kept lactating for years and even now it happens in traces. I have talked about it with a few friends but now it seems to have a scientific explanation.

Some puzzles sometimes get a faint answer and we find comfort in it. The thought that she is with me comforts.