ng School
Starti
My dear little girl started school last week. She
was so eager, so keen to get back to the world
of children her age, of educational toys and
singing, snack time and home time. Shrugging
off 6 weeks of lazy mornings and playing dens
with her little brother, picnics and bickering.
She impatiently posed for the iconic first-dayat-school photo, tugging at the sleeves of her
new red cardigan. Then raced down the road,
shiny shoes carrying her to the place she’d been
promised all summer.
It was such chaos. Children and parents squeezed
into the tiny cloakroom, none of them sure
what to do. Each peg had a picture of its new
owner dangling from it, taken during their first
taster session, looking a bit reluctant and unsure.
I hope they change those soon. They reminded
me of newborn pictures, taken the minute she
was born. Such an earth-shattering moment,
her tiny face so distressed - where am I? Newly
emerged from the mother-world that reaches
to the very tips of the unborn universe, only to
discover there is more than you ever imagined
She wasn’t sure as we approached the door. there could be.
She hesitated and drew in close to me, I held
her hand for reassurance. A point of contact, The first time I heard my daughter’s heartbeat,
pressing her fingers into my palm. I hug her via a trumpet-shaped doppler device, I imagined
close, so we don’t miss each other too much, that heartbeat pumping rhythmically through
that’s what we say when we are going to be the rest of my pregnancy, through cutting her
apart. It always amazes me just how far apart it’s first tooth, through every nap and tantrum, bapossible to be, when once we were part of the boom ba-boom ba-boom, on the morning of
same body. Even the other side of the road feels her first birthday, ba-boom ba-boom ba-boom,
distant in comparison.
tirelessly tapping out the same tune on her first
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