my mamma, Ann Elizabeth, was in labour with me for 5 days.
i never fully appreciated the magnitude of this until i was struggling with the contractions that would eventually usher my own boy into the world.
we did things a wee bit differently, him and i, and it was a wild, and fairly quick, 7 hours and forty minutes before i could finally look into the bluest eyes and feel the fabric of my being change forever.
my mamma had a traumatic time, in more ways than i want to tell, and my birth was filled with fear, but also a story i was only given a few years ago.
we are shaped by what is given to us, much like what is taken from us leaves a mark somewhere on the soul.
i have always been searching, always grappling with fear.
every year on the first of May my mamma would tell me how she went into labour on this day ‘so many years ago’. the story would walk through her head, out of her mouth, and into my heart, year after year, culminating with my birthday.
this is the first year that i have not been given the story of how she became my mother and how i came to live, alive, outside of her.
we’ve almost made it to the final push, my mamma and i, but i will have to remember the story, wordless, behind my own eyes.
this year has ripped through me and i have lost my words and my stories.
and now, despite the responsibilities that boundary my life, i am only a small child searching for her mother.
x
liezel graham 