First day of school

Children

Whether by careless accident
or careful plan
we are where they begin

They grow in us
like germs or fictions
and we grow big with them

Red, mewling strangers
they tear our thresholds
and immediately we love them

When people say
they look like us
we smile and blush

We listen for their cries
as if we felt their pain
and hunger deep inside us

and hold them tightly
in our arms as if we'd found
a lost part of ourselves

We want to give them
all the things we never had
to make it up to them

for all the times
when we were hurt or or sad
to start again and put right

our mistakes in them,
to run in front of them
with warning flags.

We who've failed to be
the authors of our lives
write theirs.

We make them heroes,
starts whose happy endings
will scatter light in ours.

We feed them with our dreams
then wait and watch
like gardeners for flowers.

Vicki Feaver (1943-)

Allow me to be a little bit sentimental today. It's the first day of school for my son.

































How can it be five years already?
Only yesterday you were placed hidden by towels, squirming on my deflated belly. Your weight now on the outside. They lifted you up, your limbs grasping for warmth and I saw you. My son. Your poor, mis-shapened head, wide mouth crying out at the new sensations. I gathered you close under my chin, my heart beating to comfort you.

I've watched you growing, your personality unfurling like a koru releasing each tendril. Sometimes it is a gentle, tender revelation. At other times a sharp explosion of force. Your helpless dependence changing into strength and purpose.

Today I gather you in again, to comfort me. To feel again, that pressure from you, the welling up of love inside. To smell your small boy scent, to feel your fingers slipping, worm like into mine.

I know you are ready for this next step. Already your mind is reaching out trying to grasp, to devour new ideas. But for myself, I wish to return just for one sweet moment to that time when your existence could be experienced by me only. Those gentle rolls, rippling the surface of my skin. The pummels of your fists as though you were knocking out a coded message. Cradled under my heart and your weight inside me.