It happened on a February day,
Nearly ten years ago,
That magical and terrifying year,
The last of the millennium,
My first year as a mother.
My world was rocked,
Dragged to hell and back,
Exhaustion and pain.
Eventually I came up for air.
I looked down at the tiny pair of brown eyes in my arms,
For they soon turned,
From newborn charcoal-grey to the deepest brown.
And felt like I was sinking,
Sinking, drowning, struggling,
All those things a mother should not feel.
And I was unable to see,
Those tiny pair of eyes appraised me, critically.
Was that possible?
Now that I know him better,
I realise it was.
The turning point in my life,
The day I became a mother,
Nothing has been the same since.
This life that I brought into the world is a driving force all on its own,
This life is a tour de force, a whirlwind,
He is quick silver,
He is deep,
He is indignant,
He is everything that I am and everything that I am not. Is that possible?
The day I became a mother: colder than ice,
The days blurred, I stopped running,
As winter trudged slowly through to spring, so slowly.
The Italians said ‘e uno di noi’ and the child chuckled,
And I was afraid.
Fear and dread,
Inexplicable, this was what I had always wanted,
To become a mother,
To link hand in hand with a tiny life force of the future,
Into that unknown terrain.
Nearly ten years later he takes my hand,
And I look again into those eyes, glinting, as his father’s do.
I see the man ahead of us,
The child becomes a man, a man of my own making,
Is he a man after my own heart?
This is the turning point,
The sum of the parts… produces what?
The future? A mystery?
Someone who will break my heart? Maybe.
Someone who will show me the way? I hope so.