Me and My Mommy

I’m sitting on bench outside of my daughters’ first “real” class without me. She’s been to PE and art classes. We have also been to many other classes but we have either gone together or she has been with her sister. Today she is all on her own and she is excited. She was a little hesitant when she first walked in, then she found a seat and waved goodbye.

The class is ninety minutes and it’s a thirty-minute drive back home so I decided to stay. I brought my sketchbook and my music player. I was ready to waste some time. I don’t get to do that very often. I wasn’t ready for feeling so completely alone, and lost, and without purpose.

I’m sitting here writing in my sketchbook instead of drawing. I’m not sure why the images I draw don’t express what I want to say. That has never happened before. I think I blame this blog and all the hours I’ve spent reading your words. They have made images in my mind of what you feel. I don’t like words. I don’t like writing words. I like seeing. I like to get lost in colors, and lines. I am happy when I find myself in the hidden and the yet to be known. I like looking and seeing what could be and what is. That is me. But instead, I am here writing with my super-fine graphics pen in the lightest of strokes – so not to mush the point – and wondering how permanent and lightfast the Indian ink will be when it is exposed to the light of what I am feeling and wanting and needing.

I feel that nothing will ever be the same again. I am correct. It won’t. Nothing is ever as it was yesterday. Like a spy collecting secrets, I watched my baby through the small pane of glass that separated us and it reminds of me of the first time I was ever without her body, either from the inside or out, pressed to mine. The day they took her from me to weigh her, and make a print of her tiny little foot. Then we gave her a name. She became as real to everyone else as she had always been to me. I try to remember that today is good. She laughs and plays without me. And this is good. Someone else is helping her learn and grow and become the person she will be. It’s all good. It’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s all right. I have to think about something else…

…now I’m thinking, that guy in a tie is looking at me and it’s annoying me. He looks like he wants to talk. I’m not in the mood for any more words. I think I better go sit in my car. I have a box of tissues in there. Maybe we can talk later.