Victoria
I am very bad about arranging time with my niece. Sometimes I wait too long to spend time with her, but mainly I wait until the last minute to make plans, never know exactly what we will do together, and am sloppy about informing everyone that is involved.
Much of this, predictably, is because I am a last-minute person who slacks at making plans.
Much of it, perhaps even most of it, is because it feels wrong. Making arrangements for sitters at the right time would feel more natural. Shaping my entire life around the inevitability of her being here, dependant upon me as her mother, feels like the only natural life for my baby and me. Arranging time to see her… alien. She should simple be here, night and day. There should never need be any thought given to visiting her, only to the occasional inconvenience of sending her away to a sitter or relative or friend. This relationship has been twisted, inverted, turned inside out by the cruel gap between the reality of her physical parentage, and my love for my daughter.
Sometimes this life feels wrong, making arrangements to fit her into my life, when at heart, she is the center and purpose of my life.
From before she was born, to the time I asked my sister if I could adopt her, to these days now, when she has a tiny room (usually empty) in my humble home, I find myself swallowing the selfish need to have my girl with me because I know that it is better for her to be with her parent.
Her crib was a few steps from my bed, her baths happened a few inches from it, her food hand ground by my overly-long pale fingers, her face and fingers washed ritually by my spirit and heart and every other cheesy expression… I have moved on in my life, but my heart is still there, hanging over her empty crib, where I cried every night after she was whisked away from it… That was the place where I was forced to accept that she was not mine.
I am a realist. I accept the ugliest of the facts of life before they even dare approach me. I have widened my stance and prepared for every worst truth before it had the time to smack at me, but this one most obvious truth I refused to see. I didn’t carry her, give birth to her, or name her… yet I have never once really accepted that she is not mine, and I never will be able to.
Much of this, predictably, is because I am a last-minute person who slacks at making plans.
Much of it, perhaps even most of it, is because it feels wrong. Making arrangements for sitters at the right time would feel more natural. Shaping my entire life around the inevitability of her being here, dependant upon me as her mother, feels like the only natural life for my baby and me. Arranging time to see her… alien. She should simple be here, night and day. There should never need be any thought given to visiting her, only to the occasional inconvenience of sending her away to a sitter or relative or friend. This relationship has been twisted, inverted, turned inside out by the cruel gap between the reality of her physical parentage, and my love for my daughter.
Sometimes this life feels wrong, making arrangements to fit her into my life, when at heart, she is the center and purpose of my life.
From before she was born, to the time I asked my sister if I could adopt her, to these days now, when she has a tiny room (usually empty) in my humble home, I find myself swallowing the selfish need to have my girl with me because I know that it is better for her to be with her parent.
Her crib was a few steps from my bed, her baths happened a few inches from it, her food hand ground by my overly-long pale fingers, her face and fingers washed ritually by my spirit and heart and every other cheesy expression… I have moved on in my life, but my heart is still there, hanging over her empty crib, where I cried every night after she was whisked away from it… That was the place where I was forced to accept that she was not mine.
I am a realist. I accept the ugliest of the facts of life before they even dare approach me. I have widened my stance and prepared for every worst truth before it had the time to smack at me, but this one most obvious truth I refused to see. I didn’t carry her, give birth to her, or name her… yet I have never once really accepted that she is not mine, and I never will be able to.
posted by TwistedNoggin at 10:38 PM
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