Memories of Summer

[Week 6: Maggie]

(Words written around twenty years ago)

Dear Michael,

Childbirth hurt. I had heard about it before, the pain that made women unable to do anything about it suffer for hours. Growing up I also got to hear that when you saw that little wonder of yours, all the pain would go away. That part was something I don't think people who haven't gone through the whole process can imagine.

But the pain felt nice actually. It started in this lower region of my body and then climbed up my nerves to blind me from anything but it. My body that had felt nothing but numb since Nancy's sudden death and finally the heavy burden on my shoulders were replaced by something else.

I loved the pain.

But when that little creature was laid across my chest and she started to scream and her small fingers were spreading for her to capture the world, something happened. The world stopped, she just quickly opened her eyes and took a glimpse at the world and our eyes met. She stopped screaming and instead let me put my arms around her to just hold her.

She was mine, my daughter.

It was at the end of the summer and the fan in the roof of the white room with pale blue curtains didn't work properly. John had been holding my hand as I pushed and the thin white shirt of his almost showed his beating heart inside of his excited body. He carefully took the child form me and as he sat down beside me held her in his arms.

I didn't know if it was sweat or tears that made my face all wet but what my eyes captured right now was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

But Michael, as you know everything good doesn't last forever. John and I had graduated high school and John had been offered a place at a University, his dream University. But it was on the other side of the country and we didn't have the money.

It didn't matter how much I told him that he could go, that he should go. I would stay here for a while but then I and our daughter would come with him after a while. We just needed to get some things set, like money and I needed to see that my mum would manage on her own.

But he didn't want to hear me, it was as if now when we had a child all our possibilities had been taken away from us. Of course, I understood that we had a responsibility now, but I did never think that would stop us from living out our dreams as well. I was almost as if he was blaming me for becoming pregnant. Like the fact that he didn't go to University was my fault.

But how come that he could still sit up all night with our daughter and look as if there wasn't a worry in the entire world?

We named her Laura Nancy Collins.

At first, I need to admit that I wanted nothing more than for her first name to be Nancy. But after some thinking I also understood that name would always cause a shiver to run up my spine, a tear to fall from my eye and a surrounding of something missing as soon as I heard it.

John's parents have helped us a lot. It is very likely that they are just nice toward me because of the fact that my sister recently died, my mum has lost her mind and my father never existed. (But what do I know?)

Maybe also because John is their only child and Laura is really a little sunshine wherever we take her. Always laughing and those small golden locks on her hair and her warm brown eyes creating a certain atmosphere of happiness.

When I hold in my arms it doesn't totally make up for the loss of Nancy, but for a while, I forget the sorrow that keeps poking my heart. It is the biggest relief every time she doesn't question if I cry or if I don't feel like to speak, she is just there.

Something that worries me is John, all his teammates and friends have left this sleeping town to achieve their dreams and it feels like I am the reason after all for holding him back. I never really had a lot of friends but out of his, he is the one that got left behind.

And he sure lets me know.

Not by telling me or expressing or explaining his pain. But by not smiling in the morning, by not having those long talks we used t have and by sometimes taking Laura with him out for hours to then return and tell me that all he did was going to the park.

So as you can hear me and John doesn't have the greatest of moments in our relationship, and I can just pray that this is just a phase and it will pass. But at least he stayed, he didn't run away and never talked to me again. You never even cared to see how mum was doing. How could you ever leave her in a state like and still live with yourself afterward?

She isn't doing so well. Just so you know, I literally think this is it, after Nancy's death she has lost it completely.

Bye, Michael

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Dearest reader

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Your dearest,

6th of April