I've just spent a torturous afternoon trying to convince the LGBB that little girls who irrationally shriek and throw things then cry pitifully once they are thrown (and therefore out of reach when they're strapped into their carseat) are in need of a nap.
It took another five minutes for her to decide she didn't want to stay up on her own and if Mummy and Scraps were going for a lie-down in bed, then she wanted to too. Five minutes later, calm was restored to my Sleeping Beauty.
I watched her chest rise and fall as I lay there, playing 'sleeping' so as to encourage her to do the same. And as her little fingers twitched and tugged at the throw rug while she slipped further into a deep sleep, I marvelled once again that I have helped create someone who breathes. She has an immune system. A heart. A mercifully perfect heart (as far as the investigations have so far shown - something we had to brace and prepare for when she was a wee eight week-old, my what a scary wait in the waiting room THAT was). She has lungs, hair, ten fingers and toes.
And I still can't quite believe how lucky I am to have been granted this second chance to witness it. I am still awestruck that she breathes. Rise, fall, rise, fall goes her chest.
Perhaps it is the fact that I have this week handed the draft of my book (the first seventeen chapters, as it stands) to another two trusted confidantes for further fine-tuning, input and constructive feedback, that I feel like my other little girl is "somewhere out there". Thinking about her in all of this. Her place in the world, my world, our world. Each time a key moment, an enriching moment - like the latest Santa photo or the opening of another window on our advent calendar - happens between us, it instantly causes me to think about Ella. And it's not that it happens with a heavy heart, but it's not an entirely happy heart. It is what it is - these moments are always going to be tinged with a bittersweetness. That's just the way it is, for Steve and me. For all parents, I daresay, who are parents again after the loss of their baby.
I am going over to a girlfriend's place on Friday night, to help with preparations for her little girl's fifth birthday on Saturday. I'm to make candy-stripe coloured cardboard popcorn flutes (for popcorn to go in, of course!). I am also going to be hanging butterflies on string on the gold-painted branch which is to be the table decoration. She's having an Ariel cake - her favourite character.
My friend, I'm sure she's forgotten in the course of preparing for her daughter's birthday, is blissfully unaware that my own heart feels kinda ripped out with any of these major events in her daughter's life. There was only six weeks between her and Ella. There should have been something like four months, but she was born late and Ella born so early that the gap shortened. And now, well, so many months - five years, to be exact - have gone by that I don't think my girlfriend really realises this could possibly hurt me so much. To be a good friend and go over and help her out, I don't feel like putting a dampener on this happy occasion for them. It's not fair of me, it feels selfish nowadays. So I don't mention it, except for places like in here.
But it does. It really does hurt.
And then there's the LGBB. Rampaging her way through stores today when she was so overtired and I'd missed her ideal window for bedtime because we had to be out... So beautifully proving she is so very alive. The little monkey.
Tomorrow is the Master Rose class at Peace Space. It's the ray of Co-Creation. And, so I have been told in the past, one that is integral to my future work in this area. Makes sense. My writing in the book lately has been focusing on the wonder that is just what has to go into a baby being born. It's not as "simple" as it seems on the surface. It's not even as straightforward as sperm meeting egg. Oh, no. It goes way beyond that. I can't remember exactly how I've put it in the book - and perhaps you'll just have to read it ;P - but it didn't surprise me that I found out Master Rose was coming up not long after I was exploring this in my writing.
So I am looking forward to it. Uncovering more, discovering more. Just another string to the bow that seems to be turning into my future life's work.
More later.
