Hello
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he’s there…hidden in plain sight
Read MoreGone home
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The snail carries its home on its back and keeps growing that home as it needs to, though I like to imagine it can, like a hermit crab, discard one home for another when the first just won’t do. A falling star, like the one I saw above the mountains on the night you left us, shoots off into the atmosphere and burns itself off. Where have you gone, little one? Where did you find to make your home, alone, in the wilds, without me?
Read MoreWhat it's like
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These questions remain, hanging: Where would he have sat at Thanksgiving? What costume would he have worn for his first Halloween? (a ghost, he was going to be a ghost, just as his sister was her first Halloween). Who would he have become?
Read MoreThe keeper
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It’s late afternoon, Mother’s Day 2020, my ninth Mother’s Day without Anja. We walk across campus, keeping 2 metres distance between us and other families, this strange new normal we’ve already learned to accept. The children stop to climb a tree. I stoop down. A smooth round pebble nestled in a patch of bulbous brown mushrooms has caught my eye. I pick it up, rub it clean, pocket it. A keeper.
Read MorePeripheral
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In my peripheral vision, I can sometimes see a fuzzy outline. A silhouette of a chubby baby that should be here too. It’s easy to become distracted by that ghost. I try not to get too lost in that because I know that he’s just in my head and there are so many other directions that I’m pulled towards. But sometimes it’s nice to have a ghost for company when I’m going through the motions.
Read MoreMelancholy
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Another festive season, the sixth without my daughter and I’m open about that fact that I stand on either side of it. Glad to be here with my son and devastated not to have my daughter. I will allow myself to feel the ache and desolation, but it will not ruin me like it hasn’t in Christmases past. I will stand, with my crooked spine and my slouched shoulders until this too passes. And it will.
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