Love for a Child

I am posting this piece of writing that I actually started months ago when I had changed my Facebook profile picture to a baby pic of mine.

In my re-read of the writing, I am moved to share here...in honor of time's complexities, in honor of the unknown and most importantly, in honor of resilience and personal power - something I have cultivated over time.

The post, in its original form:

I just posted a retro picture on my Facebook profile - a baby picture of myself as my father holds me against himself and my mom.

I always instinctively smile when I see this picture and inevitably, a slight sadness follows. I look at that fresh face of mine, those little wide eyes taking it all in, those delicate little hands, one up in a prissy gesture that would come to be my trademark.

I want to hold her for a minute...press that little body next to mine and whisper a truth into her ears that she won't understand until much later in life. I want to meet her eyes and have them never look away - they will do that enough over the course of her life to come.

I want to open the palm of her hand so she knows it is her destiny to receive.

I want to lift her chin, guiding her head up, so she never cowers under the brute forces to come.

I want to tell her that it's not going to be her fault.

I want to tell her that she is worthy and beautiful and I want to plug her ears to the painful contrary that will be waged against her defenseless youth.

I want to shield her body from the various assaults to be mounted against her innocent flesh as manifestations of someone else's shit.

I want to open her heart and fill it with love and trust in something more.

I want to write for her and sing to her an anthem of her grace, her beauty, her strength - so that her pulse only knows this rhythm and with every beat of her heart, another note its ode to her greatness.

This picture...this picture was taken just a few months after I almost died in my mother's arms...I know now, there was too much waiting for me for such a premature ending. Every moment of my life a thread in the greater fabric.

One day I want to look at that picture and not feel sad, or so pulled to rescue that sweet, dear little baby from what I know awaits her.

I've read ahead in the story - she turns out fine. She turns out beautiful and wise and deep and rich but the long road it took to get here catches up with her sometimes and demands reckoning - for all the tears never cried, for all the hurt never felt, for all the screams that never found their way out and for all the times she drew herself in because she didn't trust that she could reach out.

I am a product of my past but I am the ultimate author of this life - THIS belongs to me and now I know.