BackwaterBlog

I’d like to take this opportunity to say (I mean, other than the fact that yes, we do still liveth) Happy Birthday to the Eldest Daughter.

Lo, some 24 years have passed since you elected to pop out and take a peek at life.  It was a very different life we led back then, and . . . so help me, Mom was younger than you are today, laying in that hospital bed as she was.

Some six or seven years ago, on one of those 4 am mornings I wrote this:

I dreamed last night of family and woke to find them all in beds, in their own worlds. Their own separate and striving minds clicking off the days, their heads on pillows of unknown futures.

I think of them, sitting here with these white keys. Think of them in slumber and unconcious nothing, off and away they are to places I’ll never go. They are girls, they are boys, they are part of me and I of them. I was there at the birth, when tangled flesh came forth and tiny eyes full of light looked up at me in solemn trust. They knew nothing then, and knew all. I made them, I unmake them. I hold them close and let them go.

Where shining things go they follow. Limbs long and tresses of hair they trundle off each day where I’ll never go, never see. They leave me, I leave them. The most good and perfect workmanship I’ll ever do, they go from me. And watching them move about, laugh around, float above, it makes me shiver to see what can be done with creation. They are of this earth, and they are not.

My little ones grown large, you keep me fearful of things dark coming to you. Sweetness of days is always our aim, my children. I loomed big over you once upon a time, and once upon a time days, I wish for you. I shield you, I shield you not.

I would stop clocks to keep you. I would put up stronger walls to guard you.

I will let you run where wolves and shepherds are.

So it is.  Seems like yesterday, yes it does.