I close my eyes and see her.
Tottering on chubby legs, brown curls bouncing in the breeze, she runs in dappled sunlight under Moreton Bay figs towards me. Laughing, both of us, I scoop her up into my arms and swing her around, the sun and sky and clouds a blur behind her as I focus on her beautiful face — button nose, rosebud lips and big blue eyes not unlike my own.
“More Mama!” she cries, her tiny hands taking a firmer grip on my arms. She is confident and calm in my embrace, the world a place of adventure and joy. I twirl around one more time and place her sandaled feet gently, but firmly, on the soft green grass. I squat down so we can be face to face. She solemnly puts her hands on my hands.
“I have something to tell you.”
I take her hands in mine. “Really, what is it?”
She pauses, and I watch her formulate her thoughts, the soft rise and fall of her chest the only passage of time.
“I love you Mama,” and my heart falls out and swells a hundred times its size and encompasses us both in that moment.
This tiny child, so cherished, so beloved, so wanted from before the moment she was conceived — for years and years — is there in front of me, whimsical and serious and so damn beautiful, and every day I feel like my body is flying apart and being put back together anew in this shape called ‘mother’ so I can contain all the love I never knew I could express.
All the hopes and dreams I have for this tiny being coalesce and disentangle like breathing. She will be a writer. She will be an artist. She will be a lawyer. She will be a dancer. She will be an economist. She will be a therapist. She will be a doctor. She will be a mother. She will be an athlete. In and out, in and out, in each breath her future changes as she responds to the world around her.
For sure she will be a feminist, my little mop-haired feminist child, seeing the world for what it is and ready to challenge it. Not cowed or afraid or angry, just prepared. She will be fascinated by people, and the way they think and feel. She will be a helper, I’m sure, always looking for a way to make someone else happier, or feel better, or less bad. She will love art and music and theatre, and will surprise me by loving something intensely physical, like sprinting or hockey or taekwondo. She will reach out to the world and give it the best of her but also, I hope, know when to save the best for herself.
She will be loved. So loved. My family — her family — will encircle her so tightly she will never know what it feels like to not have a soft place to land. Her aunt and uncles will dote on her, each sharing with her the parts of themselves that mean the most — theatre, movies, outdoors, games. Without realising, they will show her who they are, and she will adore them. Her grandparents will be stunned by her, and they will gently guide her towards the values that formed me. Our extended family will welcome her into the fold, and she will run around with cousins and second cousins and great cousins and cousins once removed, belonging. Her godmother, my best friend — will give her light and love and passion, and a place to go when she can’t talk to me. And the rest of my chosen family will orbit her, coming in and out of view, showing her all the ways love can present.
“You know what?” I say, smoothing her curls, caressing her face.
“What?” she replies, her head tilted slightly, eyes curious.
“I love you too.”
She smiles and I stand and we hold hands, walking into the sunshine.
I open my eyes and come back to myself, remembering that it will never be. If she’s in some cosmic waiting room, someone else must call her name.
Molly.