Bathed in a golden light on a worn-in sofa, she changed her squealing baby’s nappy, singing a song which had the magic ability to break hearts and heal them in the same beat. And in that moment, in that hushed room, the sounds of others’ domestic tasks - the whir of a cooking appliance, the round, soft ring of a bin lid opening - whispering in from through the door, in that moment, I was both her and her child. The first time, maybe, that I felt nostalgia for my postpartum life.
Light’s dual nature as both wave and particle, like a river, means every person experiences the same light anew. It is not really the same. Memory, like light, like rivers, moves and bends and glares, glows and dims.
We’d switched places, her now on the wooden bench after rocking her baby to sleep in his pram, me on the hug-like sofa. I moved into this patch (her patch, their patch, my patch, our patch?) of light that had been called into being by her and her son. When I’d sat down I had felt the sun warming my bare legs, the moment my skin came into view of the sun, touched by light. I received wave and particle, from over 150 million kilometres away, travelling at - literally - the speed of light to reach me, here.
My trinity of tattoos wrapped round my thigh, glowed: a wolf for my child who’s name is shortened from Rudolf, a Germanic name translating to famous wolf. A hazel branch for my mother who shares her name with the tree. A brightly coloured, horned, clawed, demonic beast drawn in the shape of a ring, above my knee. This is me, although I didn’t know it when I received it. The watchful, vengeful protector of my family, the destroyer of those who threaten what I mother. Yes, this too is burnished.
She had sung to her baby first, but to us quiet writers in the room, secondarily: we received a reflection, a refraction of care, of love even? I thought of my own child's life, my life with my child, our lives, or life, together, as they have rushed by in the last 6 years, travelling at the speed of light. The songs my daughter chooses, my autistic babe, are the same 3 every night: Bella Mamma, a simple Italian song meaning beautiful mum. How Much Is That Doggy in the Window to which she responds with a meow or a woof (I’m forced to change the doggy to a kitten with a glare). The chorus of Mamma Mia, I don’t know why. When my own mother sang to me as a child, wrapped in her arms in the stillness of night, her voice whisper-singing lullabies, I would cry with the impossibility of love. Impossible for its softness, its breadth, its fierce foreverness. Impossible for its edges, its inability to flood my alveoli and my capillaries.
I looked back at the table of mother-writers, on an outbreath. How strange. How strange. Over 4 days, I’d forgotten to remember to separate memories, dreams and stories. They had soaked into each other. Was my child the breastfeeding baby, the scuttle of toddlers and pre-teens, the adult children I’d come to know in words, in imaginations? It didn’t matter.
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Drafted at Moniack Mhor on the 'Writing Parenthood' retreat, July - August, 2024.
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