Day before Maya was born.
This is hard to write. I sit here and stop typing, wishing you would stop your soulwrenching midnight crying, unable to be comforted by your daddy laying next to you, holding you.
Even now, tears stream down my face. I don't know what they're for, I feel like all my hopes for you are crashing down, right now...in this spot.
I don't always feel this way. Some days I feel ready to take this all on, take on the entire freakin world on your behalf, lift a mountain for you if it stood in the way of you and your little bike.
Where do I start? It's like a crashing ocean of emotions inside of me and I feel like a surfer who has tried to catch a massive swell and been dumped into the blackness of the water, unable to find her way to the surface.
The water theme continues; it feels like you're laying just beneath the watery, ripply surface of a lake. I see your face, your lovely, brown eyes, gazing up at me and I can reach in and touch you but the water is a barrier. My words reach you muffled, incoherant, warbly and you just blink at me.
Since the dawning of slow realization of your 'different'ness', I've picked up all my hopes and dreams, the things I took for granted would be yours, and gone over them. Little pebbles I turn in my hands and contemplate while I sit and watch you quietly.
Most days I wake up and prepare for a day of battle. Most days I want to lock myself in an empty room and cry from exhaustion, physical and emotional. I will feel like I don't have it in me anymore, to continue this way, and that's when you turn a corner and do something like hug me and tell me "I love you".
Today. Oh, today was a great day. Your dad and I took you and your sister grocery shopping, the sun was out. We came home where your dad made beef stew and put it in the slow cooker, baked a loaf of garlic cheese bread and you helped me make cupcakes with pink icing, breaking in our new electric mixer.
I gave you the wooden spoon AND the beaters and watched you relish licking the cupcake batter off them, just like I used to relish it when I was a kid. Rite of passage of kidhood, y'know...
We danced to songs from your favourite online kids radio station and your baby sister looked up at us with big, laughing eyes as we danced around the room, even getting your daddy to abandon the kitchen for a few minutes and join in. I took a mind-polaroid shot just then, because I knew that right there, in that sundappled dining room, was our happiness.
If it's true when they say that scenes from your life flash before your eyes right before you leave this world, that would be one of ours.
Your sister went down for a nap and you and I took it outside where we painted the styrofoam inserts that came with the box that once held that electric mixer. We painted, we sang, we acted out scenes from your favourite kid shows.We iced those cupcakes (and I let you steal licks of icing too).
I helped you into your ballerina costume and pink daisy gumboots and we traipsed outside in the sunshine and I took photos of you, my amazing, beautiful girl. You did your best to avoid the camera, like a Hollywood actress evading papparazzi.
Then, around 4pm, we were sitting inside and you asked me to sing along with you, a couple of lines from a Backyardigans episode:
"Coz, I'm not only beautifulllll...
I'm extra, EXTRA tough!"
So, we did. We sang it. And you asked me to sing it with you over and over until suddenly, your face started crumbling and you wept your way through the last line, heartbrokenly.
As if it unlocked the saddest part in you and let it all flow out.
Surprised, I asked you what was wrong but you kept insisting we sing those lines and you kept crying inconsolably around the same part.
It continued, for most of the night. You would sometimes snap out of it really quickly but not for long.It was as if you were on a loop you couldn't get off.
I took you to bed and lay next to you and tried to cuddle you. To no avail. I couldn't comfort you tonight, expect for when I told you we are best friends forever. You smiled and repeated it and,for a few minutes, you were happy.
Than the loop started again and the tears flowed, this time yours and mine. I lay there, mystified and helpless and knew you were caught in the swing of this 'world' you have inside of you, one I can't access right now.
See, sometimes I feel, see you break the surface of the water and I think "Wait, maybe she doesn't have it....?" but I couldn't hide from it tonight, it was laid strong and bare in front of me.
I couldn't reach you baby and it broke my effing heart and I cried, oh I cried there in the darkness right beside you, hoping you wouldn't know I was crumbling, that I had crumbled.
My mind raced ahead and tried to scan the future;
Will you have a good life?
Will you be bullied at school like the kids I went to school with who were targeted just because they were different?
Will you enjoy a good relationship, get married, have kids....?
Then I reminded myself I had to step up and comfort you, be the mama, be your comforter. I couldn't afford to crumble there at that time.
So, I did, I put on my best soothing, firm "I got you...." voice and you fell asleep, finally.
Then I went out to your daddy and wept in his arms, like a heartbroken child myself.
Do you...? Are you....? I don't know. I think you do....I think you are....
I know this; you're Maya.
I'm your mama.
I'm gonna lift mountains for you.
I love you.
XOXOXO
