Capture Your Grief - Day 8. Beautiful Mysteries
Hhhhmmm, I'm not sure about this... Bottom line of today's prompt:"If it is not too painful, allow yourself to imagine who your child would be now. What would they be like?" The thing is, it IS too painful but, bipolarly it's also amazing and something that I do every day of my life from the moment Olivia was born.
I am not good at knowing what a baby is supposed to be doing when and I do truly believe that all babies are different, but I do know that she would've been smiling now and THAT would've made all the potential poop in my face worth it.
I hate that I will never know what colour her eyes were, even though I prayed that she had Pierre's green/blueish eyes. As any mother does, I dreamed about that moment when we would finally look at each other so I can tell her: Hola chiquita, yo soy tu mamá... I did do that when I met her, but I didn't get to have her look at me and think: Aaaahh, so that weird shape is where the sound in my hotel was coming from (eventually she would have understood who I really was). I would give anything to exchange looks with her...
Thinking of who she would be know, at almost 4 months old is painful and sad because I have reminders of that everywhere around me. So, I won't explore that mystery. Instead, I will write of a parallel universe, where Olivia is alive and we are having a normal day as a family.
It's Saturday at 6:30am and Olivia starts to cry demanding food, I wake up and walk to her crib and say a few sleepy words along the lines of "aquí está mami y ya te voy a dar de comer, yaaay". By this moment, I would've mastered the art of breastfeeding so after getting in a comfortable position and place Olivia starts to eat and I check social media and read anything that might keep me awake (let's face it, I would've been watching Jimmy Kimmel videos on YouTube). At some point I would've texted Pierre to come over and join. Fast forward and we all ate at least a cookie, had coffee, got dressed and ready to go and we decide to go out for a walk and run some errands and potentially get a new dress for my friend Perla's wedding. Pierre gets the Ergo baby, Olivia gets strapped and off we go!
Throughout the day we have mini fights around she's hungry/tired/sleepy/dirty and as to who should do what. We are not able to go get the dress because Olivia is cranky and Pierre and I are getting on each other's nerves a bit because this parenting thing is intense. So, after we all ate on our day out, we decide to come home and Olivia naps all the way back (yes, she is quite awesome at napping). We get home and once she wakes up we have play time and she laughs at anything her dad does, specially when he plays guitar or goes and "eats" her belly. Pierre then proceeds at giving her a nice bath (as I'm still terrified of dropping her in the water) and I get to do the baby massages with the oils that we got for her babyshower. There will be more feeding and some potential arguments about who changes her diapers. She's then ready to go to bed for a long-ish time so we put her in her crib and tip toe out of her bedroom so she doesn't wake up. Pierre and I proceed to eat one of the frozen meals I did in preparation for my maternity leave and watch TV. On our way to bed, we stop just to check that Olivia is fine and there she is, dreaming away and making the cutest baby noises whilst we marvel at the perfect amazingness that our daughter is and wonder if she can dream and if so, what is she dreaming of.
Our lives with Olivia being here will forever be a mystery, but I do love to entertain the idea of a parallel universe where she actually got to stay with us. Over there, we get to see our daughter grow up, we get to fight over who changes the diapers and melt when she smiles and grabs our faces. Most amazingly, we get to be together.
Our breakfast in the parallel universe where we don't have time to make elaborate food