Sometimes you've just got to wonder.
My 12 year old son is sewing in the corner he's created for that purpose in the lounge. An old classical record screeches from the turntable he just had to have a few months back. His way of recreating the many happy hours spent with his bio mum; listening to her collection of '80s music, on their last access visit. I have her to thank for the weekends spent flicking through record piles at every op shop in Tauranga, buying anything that seemed even remotely familiar. The one playing now is not one of them, Alexi bought it on her trip away, and its full of 'waltzes and polkas and other works of J & J Strauss.' Whoever they are. Alexi is so much more adventurous than Daniel and I and we are appreciating that right now. Its cheerful and upbeat and a little bit odd. Bit only slightly.
Sewing is Daniel's latest passion. He learnt the basics at school and came home so inspired we've been scouring op shops for cheap material ever since. Ever the spendthrift he gets great pleasure in saving money and has decided old clothes are the best source of zips and buttons (after a trip to Spotlight where the price of them horrified him). Tonight he's making a small cushion from a pink babies t-shirt found tucked away in his wardrobe, leftover from days spent dressing his poor little dog (I bet she's glad that passion died a natural death).
Its reappearance is bittersweet - for both of us (and probably the dog too for all we know). It belonged to a foster baby that arrived at a week old and stayed fourteen months. How we miss her. What I wouldn't give to hold her in my arms again, take in her sweet smell and catch her cheeky smile as she empties every cupboard of its contents and smears food everywhere. Several times a day. Sitting still was not one of her virtues and she certainly kept us on our toes - and the house a mess.
Its been a year exactly, since they told us she was going to a new family, that her future did not lay with us. A whole year and it still has not sunk in that she's gone. I see and hear her everywhere, in little girls chasing waves at the beach, scrunching up autumn leaves as I walk through the local reserve, calling out from the back seat as I negotiate congested Tauranga traffic. I am haunted by her pain and confusion - the damage that was done when she was taken so suddenly, so inhumanely and my feeble efforts to advocate for her just making things worse. I miss her so much. My love for her runs deeper than the pain of her absence but together they, and the overwhelming gratitude I feel for the time we did have, draw me so close to the Source of all love its almost worth it. Its the place our souls connect freely and she led me there.
Aroha.
Her gift to me.
Anyway, as usual I digress. That is not what I was thinking when I started writing this post. It was going to be about the " Little Women" moment we were all having, our sense of togetherness and the healing that was evident in it all. Alexi finds drawing difficult. Her art is a bone of contention, a gift she'd rather not have, a reminder of things she'd rather not think of. Pixies are her safe place. That and her bed. She spends so much time in there,so completely enshrouded by her duvet its hard to tell where one ends and another begins. But tonight she's up, the duvet replaced by a new pink fluffy dressing gown and she's smiling.
And Daniel - he looks happy too. Hunched over an old school desk we picked up off the side of the road, looking like an eccentric old man, sewing madly, ending each section with a flourish of scissors and cotton. Watching him is making me laugh. He's so darn cute.
Its been awhile since I've been able to say that about him - that he's happy and that I find his funny ways cute. He went mad when L left. The first person he'd truly opened his heart to since coming into care himself, the source of much needed healing, was gone and he could do nothing to stop it happening, to prevent the deepest wound of his life reopening. Abandoned - again! It sent him downward into what can only be called insanity. How much he hurt but how much he denied doing so. His anguish and pain seeping out through irrational thinking, meanness and negativity. He hated me so much for my lack of omnipotence. My inability to protect him, to stop them from taking his 'little sis.'
But like I said its been a year now. I wouldn't say we have come to the end of our grief, I don't think we ever will, but the shock is waning. We are coming into a saner place.
Perhaps making that little cushion is his spirits way of reminding us of what we still have. Her spirit is still very much with us and tonight it feels especially close even if her physical body is not.
This cushion is tangible evidence her chubby little brown body was here. We have the t shirt to prove it. Complete with dribble stains.
Then again who knows.
