My Pallas Athena

Just a note to say that this post is mainly about my relationship with my surviving twin daughter and my living son. Forewarned is forearmed and all that. 
And this post was written and then disappeared as I decided it wasn't quite . .  truthful. As though I sit and ponder about these issues all day, every day. Which I don't. I haven't got time, I have to bounce on beds and prepare meals and sing silly songs. Not quite as earnest or as neurotic as I might come off here.
This post was the result of a conversation with my mother, we both agreed that we feel differently about Jessica than we do Reuben. We don't love her more, or less, not at all. We just feel somehow . . . differently. Second (first) child? Girl? One of what might have been two? One of what should have been none? That was as far as we got. This is me taking that thought for a walk. And not quite reaching any conclusion . . . .

"I have three children." I say it aloud, when I'm alone.
It feels like a lie in my mouth, a large round pebble that fits perfectly between my teeth and over my tongue.
"Three children."
The click of teeth against stone. Lies.

My relationship with my son is straightforward.
He is grasping, scratchy, neediness.
He is sweet, slumber, sucking.
Tiny hairs like golden wires, faint covering over the red, purple mottled birthmark adorning his scalp. Skin plumped out.
The curve of the back of his head resting on the curve of my breast.
He is expectant, baby birded mouth open, hands reaching upwards.
Towards mother, the Other so vast that he is only just now starting to glimpse around my edges.
At once tender and oppressive, the giver and the denier.

Today he storms and wails as he has a nappy rash.
And I hover, in my ambiguous role as both cure and cause.
Filling up his sky uneasily.
Hovering with cream as he utters curses up at me, that I do not ease his discomfort NOW. Five minutes ago preferably.

My relationship with my surviving daughter is different.
It has a metallic hint of desperation and unrequited love.
Closer to the ashen love of the dead than to the robust cursing and slurping of the baby.
Pale, wan but clutching, so strong.
I did not bear this child, she did not share the shadowy underwater existence of her brother.
Whilst he was gently held inside, she was splayed out on plastic.
Like a dissection.

And I let her sister go. A sin. A crime.

I do not have a high pain threshold.On my list of the 'many, many things I feel inadequate about' is how quickly I would crumple if I were ever tortured. It comes just under my inability to make a sponge cake that doesn't sink.

But I would reveal all my secrets, betray anything and anyone. I'm scared of pain, my experiences giving birth to Reuben just confirmed that I am a big ol' wuss. No stoic.

I wrote in a blog comment recently that I could not consider my own grief to be suffering as it could never be the equal of my daughters' sufferings. Their prior claim to the word was so strong.

The grief of others is suffering. But not mine somehow. Mine seems feeble, misery, self-pity, ignoble.
Or perhaps it is because, to me, the word suffering has connotations of the physical.

Images that I do not like to remember. Of inflamed, shiny skin. Of limbs jerking. Of hands and feet pierced time and time again.
I remember her writhing as though even the air brushing against her were unbearable. The nurses telling me that even the sound of my voice talking quietly would upset her today.
So I sat in silence. On a tall stool. Ungainly watching. Then I left.
I remember asking a doctor to let her go. To let her follow her sister.
Because I could not bear it.
Ever the Mother, ambivalent, wishing both for Life and Death.

My daughters, in truth.
Piteous and valiant in equal measure.

I'm still stuck there. A place I cannot leave.
Afraid to love too much.
Afraid to love insufficiently.
To be ungrateful.

It feels as though I have been watching over her, time out of mind. Ever since I can remember.
Watching, willing, wishing, wanting.
Wanting to help. Uselessly.
The pain was hers, the trial hers.

I wonder what it was like.
I used to think that, one day, I would be able to ask her.
'What was it like? All that time you were stuck in a box with machines attached to you? What did it feel like? Did you know that I was there? Did it hurt? Was it as awful as it looked?'
Then I remember that she doesn't remember. It's just a funny story that her mummy tells her.
Or perhaps it is there, somewhere, but inaccessible. In the strange black box recorder of memory.

She never raised her arms to be picked up.
She was never expectant.
Simply waiting for the hours to tick around until the next feeding or change was scheduled.
It wasn't until I had another child that I realised how different she was.
Although she is just that, a different child with a different personality, and perhaps it is merely attributable to that rather than her unfortunate start.
She had a different mother too. She still has a slightly different mother. But then perhaps all families with more than one child do.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

I can hardly remember the mother I was in that first year, the mother of these early blog posts here I suppose. With ringing ears and blinded eyes and disbelief.
My own mother says that I didn't laugh a lot.
I was cautious, earnest, anxious.

She looks at me now. Quizzically.
I shake my head and the memory vanishes.
It's just Jessica. With her love of 'numma 8' and Lightning McQueen.
Just a child. A little girl. Who skips with excitement and grabs my hand.

But it leaves me feeling strange.
As though I can't quite fit into my role.
Mother.

And I've written this blog post before.
What a game played slowly. Ah me.