Growing Up (de Schweinitz)/Chapter 6

by Karl de Schweinitz

Mating

Chapter VI

Mating

Before the sperm could join the egg and you could start growing to be a baby your mother and your father had first to learn to know and love each other. Your father needed to be sure that he had found the woman whom he would like to have become the mother of his children. Your mother needed to be sure that she had found the man whom she would like to have become the father of her children.

Ever since they had grown up each of them had been looking for a mate, that is, for a person with whom to marry and to share children. Perhaps they did not think that they were doing this, but they were. We all do this as soon as we are grown up. Each of us, although usually not knowing it, looks for his or her mate, that is for the person with whom to marry and to have children.

This is what every living creature does. Even the plants seem to do this. Only the plants do not look for the plant that is to become the mother or the father of baby plants. They seem to be looking for the breezes and for the butterflies and the bees and the insects that carry the pollen from flower to flower.

That is why the spring and the summer are so beautiful. The blossoms and the flowers are blooming in bright colors and are sending out sweet perfume as if to make the bees and the moths and other flying creatures want to visit them. The yellow evening primrose and the lily with its pure white petals seem to be inviting the moths. The red rose and the white rose seem to be inviting the bees. The flowers in the garden and the wild flowers in the wood are dressed in pink, in blue, in purple, and in white as if to welcome the tiny visitors who carry the pollen from flower to flower.

It is when the eggs are ready for the pollen and the pollen is ready for the eggs that the flowers must be especially attractive to the

Photograph by J. Fletcher Street.

The flowers in the garden seem to be waiting for the bees and butterflies to visit them.

Photograph by H. Armstrong Roberts.

The crowing rooster must seem very beautiful to the hen.

insects. Then it is that the buds of the rose begin to open. Then it is that the evening primrose begins to uncurl its petals and to send out its faint sweet perfume. It is almost as if they knew that now the time had come for them to become the mothers and the fathers of baby plants and as if they were inviting the insects to help them.

The birds dress in as bright colors as do the flowers, but instead of inviting the bees and the butterflies they invite each other. The red breast of cock robin must make him seem very charming to the mother robin. Surely when she sees how beautiful he is and when she hears the songs he sings in the spring time she must want to be near him and to be his mate and to have him place the sperms in her body.

It is when the peacock is seeking a mate that he opens his wonderful feathers, blue and green and shining purple, as if to show his beauty to the female. It is when the turkey gobbler wants the turkey hen to mate with him that he raises the feathers from his back like a fan and gives his funny gobble call while his tail feathers spread out until they sweep the ground.

It is at the time of mating that the antlers or horns of the stag have grown to their greatest size. It is then that the bodies of many fish become brighter and more beautiful. It is then that the call of the cow moose and the answering call of the bull moose can be heard in the woods. Every animal has some way of being attractive and of making love to its mate when the time has come for the sperm to join the egg, and much of all that causes the earth to be such a wonderful place on which to live is the, beauty of the animals as they make love to their mates and the beauty of the flowers when they are, as it were, making love to the bees and the butterflies and the other insects.

But even more beautiful than this is the love making of men and women. The world is full of things that tell of it. The most beautiful perhaps of all buildings, the Taj Mahal, was built by one of the kings of India to show his love for his wife. Most of the songs we sing and much of the music we hear is about love, and so are many of the stories we like to read. The Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and many others of our favorite fairy tales tell how a prince and a

Courtesy of the New York Zoological Society.

When the peacock is seeking a mate he opens his wonderful feathers, blue and green and shining purple, as if to show his beauty to the female.

Copyright, C. J. Albrecht; supplied by P. & A. Photos through Philadelphia Public Ledger.

Bull Moose and His Mate.

princess find each other and marry. Many of the brave deeds that men and women have done they have done for love of each other, and much of all that is beautiful in life is beautiful because of love.

Whether we know it or not, as soon as we are old enough to marry each of us begins to look for his or her mate. In this we are different from the animals.

With animals, the male usually tries to place the sperm in the body of the first female he meets after the time for mating has come. For some animals this time is in the spring; for some it is in the fall. For some animals it is twice a year, for others even more often, but whenever the time comes for the sperm to join the egg an animal will usually take as his mate the first animal of his kind that he sees. The animals do not know that when they join together a baby animal will probably start growing. They only know that they feel like doing this just as sometimes they feel like eating and at other times like sleeping; and if after the sperm has joined the egg two animals keep on living together they do so from habit and not because they know that soon they will become parents.

Only people know how babies are born and they are the only creatures that plan to live together and have children. Like the animals a man and a woman may feel like sending the sperm to join the egg but they do not do this unless they love each other. A human being does not choose as a mate the first person he or she meets after having grown up. Each man and each woman waits to marry the one whom he or she can love. Rather than marry some one without love some people never marry at all. When a man and a woman take each other as mates they love each other so much that they want to live together always and to help their children to become strong and happy and useful.

This is the most wonderful and the most beautiful part of the story of how we grow and are born and grow up. Each one of us starts living because of the love of his parents. You came into the world because your mother and your father loved each other so much that they started you growing to be a baby.

Reproduced by permission of Jessie Wilcox Smith.

The Sleeping Beauty and the Prince.

Courtesy of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Photograph by W. Vivian Chappel.

Bathing Girl, a statue in bronze by Edmund Austin Stewardson—"much of all that is beautiful in life is beautiful because of love."