It is a weekend.
What is a weekend?
It is when you wake up at 6.00, 8.30, 9am (depending on whether you are 3, 7, 11, 42 or 44); hang around in pajamas, half of your pajamas, your bathing suit and goggles, dressing-up costumes over your pajamas (depending on whether you are 3, 7, 11, 42 or 44); swim in the big bed, play football with a tennis ball against the oven front, listen to LPs, move all the soft furnishings from one room to another and call it a den, make lots of coffee (depending on whether you are 3, 7, 11, 42 or 44); panic when it is almost lunchtime and nothing substantial has happened (regardless of age).
But today Iris is crying instead. She has been crying for over one hour. It is more of a wailing. It is the sound we would all like to be making and so it is hard to endure. This past week without school and friends she has been a trooper, a money-counting, tree-climbing, garden-helper trooper. So this collapse has been in the waiting. We are trying to get close to her to hug, reassure, communicate with, but she has her Iris guard up. It is a hefty guard, earth-sourced, strong. We are tip-toeing around her. I even try to bring her round by showing her a video of a dog giving advice to humans about the toilet paper shortage, but she does not even crack a smile (no pun intended).
I leave it a while. The rest of us try to go about things as normal with a background of wailing. I begin to find it somewhat reassuring as it matches the wailing inside me. Cedar has decided to tidy Iris’s bedside table for her and adorn her wall with pictures. It is a beautiful offering and she goes about it quietly and patiently as Iris is showing no interest in this sibling declaration of love. I am inspired to try again. Iris is in the upstairs hallway, at the window over-looking the lovely sunny garden. She tries to hide her face behind the orchid on the windowsill, which has, this week, decided to start to bloom again.
What should I say? What could I say to make any of this better? I have no knowledge to impart. I cannot even think straight. Then I notice a picture postcard stuck to the edge of the orchid pot. It is of a painting of a native American woman wearing a little baby strapped on her back. She’s side-looking and smiling, watching her baby over her shoulder. Her baby has its head popped up out of the striped fabric. It has little pig-tails and is looking straight at the viewer. The picture is all orange and golden and red hues.
Me: Look! I used to carry you like that. You know, Iris, you are still my baby, just like this baby here. I want to be able to hold you and tell you I love you, because you are my baby. Can I do that?
And that’s it. The Iris guard falls and she leans into me.
I miss my mother.
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