"Where is it?" he shouts. An angry three year old boy with skinny legs, indignant upon the sand.
"Where is what?" I ask.
"My stabbing machine," he replies.
A thin slice of stone. To make long, deep matching dents in the sand.
Stab, stab, stab. Driven by something endlessly mysterious to me.
And yet familiar.
The stabbing machine.
***
I think about his big sister so often. My first baby.
Yet I could not, if questioned, articulate what it is that I am thinking about.
That poor little body, that tiny baby that existed so very fleeting-ly?
Not especially. Not often.
The hypothetical teenager? The Georgina that I see in every-girl.
Every self consciously turned head that matches my stare.
Curiosity.
***
"Why are you staring at me middle-aged woman?"
"Well, my love. I had a baby who died. She'd only be five now but I seem to imagine her most frequently as a teenager.
I don't mean to look at you so. But I wonder.
Would she have been like you?"
The way that you and your boyfriend stroll across the road.
Your laugh, the way that your chin protrudes reminds me of her.
Your curly hair, so like her sister's.
Arms wrapped around one another.
I am looking for her arms you see.
The arms of my first baby who never really was.
It isn't half as sinister as you might imagine.
I am not mourning the me that was you. My own slim, shiny self.
Instead.
I'm growing foetus arms to length. Strength.
Her arms.
To wrap around some skinny young boy.
Whom she might have loved.
***
This blog often feels like an admission of failure.
Every post, a defeat.
A stabbing machine.
Constructed and manned entirely by me.
Through the haze of blessed, sleep-less nights.
Of children that stir and wake.
Who ask for milk and comfort and endless stories of pretend.
Mr McGregor. Princess Celestia. Asterix. Cat in the Hat.
I will be them all. Reluctantly I admit. But I will try.
I will wake and hug and be grateful.
I miss her.
And I don't know where else to go.
In the real world. Even here.
Everybody's kindness is . . . . worn out.
But I still miss my tiny first daughter.
My Georgina.
No matter how many moons wax and wane or how much joy enters our lives we always miss our girls. xx Georgina xx
ReplyDeletePs. The song is perfect. Hadn't heard it before. Thank you. I need my girl too.
I do this same thing with teenaged girls. Teenagers are full of potential in a different way than young children: they are so obviously poised at the threshold of their *own* lives. Maybe that is it: maybe it is that sense of near-flight, near-escape, near-independence.
ReplyDelete"Yet I could not, if questioned, articulate what it is that I am thinking about." This is how I feel much of the time, too: I think of her hundreds of times a day, but I don't even know exactly what it is I'm thinking about.
Remembering your Georgina tonight - in the middle of the night, way over here in Canada.
You have every right...., to still miss her, to wonder at the love she would have chosen, the life that could be hers. It is still unfair, so very, very unfair.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I'm frustrated and angry, for you, that the patience and kindness of others has worn out.
I understand the stabbing machine. In my own way, I really do.
I do this too, I look at my teenage girls and I think of everything Florence will never know. I want that for her, I want her to grow and experience all my big girls have and will.x
ReplyDeleteThe song is perfect, thank you for introducing me to it. x
ReplyDeleteDear Catherine,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry the kindness around you has worn out. I'm sorry you are feeling worn out. Sometimes, I think we get tired and impatient with the grief. We work with it and work with it and work with it and live it with every breath and . . . . . .nothing seems to change. We are still sad, the baby is still dead. What is left to say or do after years of that?
With most things in life, we talk it out 10 or 50 times and we have a grip on it. With the death of our children, we are will to concede that it might take twice that, 100 or 200 times. And instead, it turns out it takes thousands. Thousands of talks, thousands of changes, thousands. There seems to always be another part, another change, another hurt to sort through.
Sending love, Catherine,
Jill A.
I love that song too! I know I've been quiet, but we've had another baby here too and a move away from the house where Clementine ever was.... so tired and not around as much. Sending you kindness and love and missing both our girls.
ReplyDelete