Page 9 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
I sank deeper, and more clamor faded. More pain too.
Deeper.
Silence. Freedom from turmoil.
Torn throat smoothed.
No pain of ended childhood here. No terror of loneliness.
Finally an escape from the ringing in my minds, and from this calm place, the answer felt simple.
This was not a grown woman I spoke to; this was a child. I turned my head and found the child not far away.
You will never be alone, my love,I called to her.
She cried against her knees.
You will never lose your mother.
The child screamed into her muddy hands.
She will remain with you always, talking and thinking and giving as she is now. She will provide for you always.
I floated to the child to wrap my arms around her. She cried into my chest.
From so deep under the surface, I got the sense of the storm’s end above. That happened as I saw the truth of how, at four, I had stopped feeling. That day, I had ceased to be a child in a dream where everything would work out. My happy bubble of carelessness and hope had been popped by the knowledge that my mother would leave me. Until him. Until King See. Thenhehad destroyed what new dreams and hopes and cares I had bravely dared to build.
So, then… he had not destroyed them at all.
I had allowed him to reinforce the idea that hopes, cares, and dreams could not belong to me. Part of me had expected it and chased it. Me, a child robbed of the surety of her mother’s protection and love.
Me, a woman ready for loneliness.
You will neverbe alone,I told the child.There are so many who love you, and you love them too.
She had stopped crying and started to tremble.
We are together. I have found you, and I will never let you go.
Holding her, I kicked upward and swam until my head broke the surface of the calm, clear water.
Peace extended in all directions for as far as I could see.
No clamor nor turmoil. No ringing of minds.
I hugged the child tight to me.
We will form our hopes and cares and dreams together again. We are allowed to have all of these too.
She uncurled, and I was not very surprised to find that she had been curled around something. The woman in me broke through the surface on the other side of the child. She was dressed in a flowing copper gown, and she was a queen.
She was me.
When I looked back at the child, her golden hair gleamed and her blue eyes shone with everything that I had never felt while her. A child of hopes and dreams and no fear of loss and loneliness and withering.
The water around us faded, and our surroundings became grass and meadow. In the distance, trees swayed in the gentle breeze, and a simple cabin sat behind us in the sunlight.
I faced the woman and child again, smiling. The child was dressed in a playsuit and held a knitted animal in one hand.
