I remember the first time I met you. It seemed like I had waited so long. The most anticipated meeting of my life, ever.
You were wide awake from the first moment. Perhaps you had been waiting too. I remember the first time you looked at me. Big, blue, alien eyes. You couldn’t have been more perfect.
I wanted to be your mom. I had many thoughts of us, big plans. Many happy days in the making of my mind, drawn out like figures in the sand.
Those figures in the sand, they changed with time. So ephemeral, so fragile, the smallest storm had the power to destroy them all.
And it did.
My life map was gone. My dreams, my happy hopes. The shoreline became a desert, and I was lost.
There were so many storms. So many wrong turns, searching for the path I had somehow deserted.
Searching for those big blue eyes, the smile of a Nazarath star, to light my way and lead me home.
To you.
But it was not meant to be. I was gone too long.
But you were never gone from me. My baby, my son. Through the darkness that one thought remained. The thought of you, and the little plan I once had.
I still see it sometimes. The future. The present as it could have been. As it should have been.
But those figures in the sand you see, once they are gone, they cannot be made again. Once washed away, they can never be as they once were.
Our life will never be the future in my mind. But there are always new dreams to dream, new plans to make, new maps to draw and paths to follow.
Now when I see your eyes and your smile, it’s like looking into a pool, where I catch my own reflection if the light is right, and I see an image of myself when I look at you.
I think you’ll hear it often. As you make your way down your own roads, as you cross your own desert, or sail the rocky waves of your own happy plan.
People will say, “you are a lot like your mother, you know.”
And I hope this doesn’t make you sad. Or angry, or ashamed. Your mother was a good person once. Remember the first time you met her? Your very first moment in this world? You looked at her with those big, blue, alien eyes. And the earth changed forever, with that one meeting…
I wonder now what they remember. Those ocean eyes of yours. I wonder what they have seen, and what they will see, and what images they will hold onto, after I’m gone.
I hope it is beautiful. I hope your life is unveiled before you with roses and red carpets, and you never find yourself lost in a dead and lonely desert.
But if you do, I’ll watch for you. I’ll wait for you. If you close your eyes, you’ll see me, I’ll be there. Forever drawing new figures in the sand for you.
No matter how many storms, you will find there is always a moment of calm. I will leave my dreams there for you, in those moments, and you will always have a way back home.