You know what? I think you're mostly right. Here's why I think Corri and I aren't quite on the same page with the swan concept. (Hopefully the cat will appreciate this ) Let me share a moment when I felt like my version of the swan:
NG and I just had some seriously intensely hot sex. As the afterglow fades, I rise from the bed with a certain grace, naked and confident. As I stand and prepare to walk away, he reaches out and grasps my waist with his hands and kisses me tenderly way down low on the back. I turn my head and smile at him over my shoulder.
That is me at my mature feminine non-maternal best. That's who I want to be in relation to a man. I think the swan has to do with devotion and I am devoted to finding the man with whom I can feel like that woman on a til death do us part basis (in between the laundry and the quarrels.)
Yes, the cat likes it, very much. *lazy cat grin* Gives me a Goya's "Nude Maja" vibe. Now watch me be banned for linking to "pornography".
It's funny, the problem I have with the image of the swan is not that it has to do with devotion but that it's ethereal, removed, and I don't really see you like that. For all your love of analyzing and abstract concepts you have a talent for the here and now, and your "high functioning adult female that is not the mother" is, as you've illustrated in that little scene, very much a creature able to live the moment.
Swans are also metamorphosis (mythologically, Leda and the Swan, etc), and that part might apply more, because you're certainly able to live a side of yourself that you had to keep shut in. Dunno. I may just have to get used to the image.
) Let me share a moment when I felt like my version of the swan:
