“Mummy, can you lie next to me?”
His little voice is my night light, and we chat about all sorts of things.
The other night, a thought rises as if it’s been bubbling away, unable to be contained.
“Who will take your sunshine away?”
It takes me a while to realise what he means.
The song… ‘my sunshine’…
he asks me again,
“who would take it away?”
Because who would do that?
A genuine question.
I have to wonder myself,
but I tell him the clouds.
And we talk more, mostly him.
About superman.
Or his friends at kindy.
Tonight he thinks out loud,
“Mummy… will you die?”
In a split second I realise, death no longer scares me more than the death of watching him grow to 100.
“One day” I say, “but not for a long time”.
I stroke his hair as his bottom lip drops a little, I wonder when their lip stops dropping.
It still makes me melt.
This is the shift isn’t it, when you become a mother. The scariest thing that could happen to you is no longer, but comforting them through it is.
“Darling, I’m still young (ish) I’ll be here looking after you for a long time”.
He ponders on it for a moment.
He lets the words roll over him.
And turns over quietly.
I start drawing shapes on his back,
he closes with,
“will I get another mummy when you die?”
I tell him I will always be his mummy,
but I know he wonders who will bring him home from his woes, who will wear his emotions like they fit, but mostly who will scratch his back as he drifts away to sleep.
***
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