I felt the metal tugs from the line of staples that sunk into my skin, which ran like a railroad track across my abdomen. My naive mind conjured thoughts of them popping out, and every exasperated organ inside my body would finally escape that impostor. But I slowly walked towards your crib and your longing eyes cried out in anguish.
He left that day, discontented by the burdens of parenthood. We were abandoned once before when told him about you. He came to his senses eventually, but I don't know if it was out of guilt or sense of duty. But now, it doesn't matter.
That night was my first time alone with you. The waves of isolation carried the two of us into a life of uncertainties. You crossed over and longed to be a part of this life-- with every lack of boundaries, emotional maturity, and sense of self-- with every desperate plea for acceptance, and validation. I couldn't offer you anymore than the little love I had in me. I could only give you what I had-- the little knowledge world I knew-- overestimating my abilities to fulfill your needs.
You cried a new song I never heard before. I cried too, but a sad, old played-out tune . We cried together in disharmony, which would be an all-too familiar ballad that would replay throughout the rest of our lives. I held you in my arms as you suckled the last bit of comfort, and the few drops of joy that was left in me, I gave to you. You fell asleep on my chest as Burl Ives, the voice of the snow man, serenaded us through a 24 inch box screen, "Everyone wishes for silver and gold. How do you measure its worth? Just by the pleasure it gives here on Earth."
This is a moment I never shared with anyone until now. I don't know if anyone could comprehend how this one experience influenced the existential dimensions of my life-- questioning everything I had ever known as I crawled back into infancy.
Midnight struck with no one around except God smiling upon you as the clay figures prounced in our tiny television. I never felt tired the way I felt tired that day. I never felt every single emotion at once until that moment.
Merry Christmas, my baby. It was your first Christmas, yet you were one day older than me in that moment. Recently you asked me how can I love you (in all your complexities, every tear cried, every I hate you, every manic episode). I don't think you'll understand because you don't remember that one Christmas day.
I wrote a poem for you a little over a year later, reflecting on that exact moment.
My Stranger
Stranger, you are foreign to me
Yet, you lie on my bosom
Stranger, you are untouched
Yet, you cry for my comfort
Skin of milk, hair of silk
an Angel's impression
upon each cheek.
Desolate stranger, you are
a flyspeck entity from my womb
Yet, you are larger than I—
filled with innocent sway
over my heart.
Oh little one, if only
you could see...
Not every tree sprouts flowers
But I, to be so lucky to
bear such an impeccable seed,
will water you with the
sweetest syrup and glaze you
with the lushest soils of the earth and you
will no longer by my stranger.
October 2008
