It's 5.12 a.m and silent outside. You are just over 30 minutes old, today 12th November, 12 years ago, curling in my arms and crying your offshore cry.
"It's a girl!" they called from far away , the words that found my ears as if from another country. The disbelief - how can I deserve her?
Your eyes were dark impenetrable moons the first night our worlds were joined, and I think I stared at you , faces side to side, all night long , and wondered if I were looking at god for the first time. The eternal Now. There's holy gravity in those first hours, when you are not a babe with naked nothing, but you are all wisdom and knowing in one solemn, unflinching gaze. You can't smile yet because you don't need to. And smiling, so gratifying for your earthly parents, desparate to connect, was something that brought the relief that returned you to the visceral world. In time. For you, in 4 months, March 1998.
She's not quite here yet, as if between 2 worlds" said the osteopath, 3 weeks later. How were we to know that you were always to inhabit 2 worlds, and were to return to the one from which you arrived just 7 and a half years later.
My beautiful girl. Happy Birth Day.
