lis de la pluie

Today, I’m hoping we are finally connecting the past to the present. I have imported my old diary into this one, so now you can read me back to 2002. Seven years…

Six years ago, I was listening to Mirrorball, as I am now. I actually had to buy it, since I hadn’t listened to it after moving from CD to MP3. I was living in a little apartment with blue walls and a checkerboard ceiling in St. Pete. It was probably hot and steamy, as Florida Octobers tend to be, but of course I wouldn’t have given that much notice. It was six years ago, in October, that I gave away my baby.

She of course had no idea she was leaving. Fifteen months old, life wasn’t as black and white I imagine. I worked at a fast food job, and had more dreams than money. I had yet to go to college, and had so much ignorance that I thought I knew it all.

He came down that gravel alley in a red car. I dressed her in a red suit, and put little shoes on her feet. For such a life-changing moment, it was over really quickly. He came inside with his father, just long enough for me to throw her things into plastic grocery bags. I had known she was leaving for a week, yet hadn’t packed her clothes and toys. At the time, I chalked that oversight up to stress, but now in retrospect, I wonder if it wasn’t because in some way I didn’t want to believe she was really leaving.

After less than 15 minutes, I fought her car seat into that little red sedan and buckled her inside. I remember touching her wispy hair, and telling her goodbye. In a hurry as they were, they sped off down the alley, leaving me alone in the dust from the gravel. I’m not sure how long I stood there in the mid afternoon sun. I just remember the feeling. How everything seemed more pointed, and how I focused deeply upon the shape of every pebble on the ground, and the way the scraggly trees stood against them.

She is seven now, and I have seen her once since that day. I saw her when she was four years old, and even then she didn’t know me. I had expected it, but it hurt just the same The pain was something I was completely unprepared for, surprising me with its jagged edge. No matter how hard I tried to hide it behind my walls of silence, it broke through in a torrent of unstoppable sobs. Ironically, I was so afraid of scaring her that I hardly saw her at all.

I decided that day, and the one with the red car and the dusty alleyway were something I wasn’t going to think about. I had three other children to love and take care of. So, I would lock her away in a corner of my heart I only visited alone.

Three years later, I sit in a lovely house on a quiet street. I’ve gone to school, and I have a better job. I have learned enough to know that really, I know nothing at all. My other children all go to good schools, and have the best life I can give them. Yet, she does not. Her father has kept her from me, and actually told her I am dead. That said, there wasn’t much to prepare me for the message. The message to tell me he is doing drugs. To tell me he is abusive and  that he has them all living in a dumpy studio apartment. That she is such a sad little girl that she comes home from school and goes to bed.

I did what any mother would, and made calls to change that. I have prepared myself for the possibility of making the 1500 mile journey to her, and making her my daughter again. I have done all I can for the moment, and all I can do is wait.

So, I’m waiting.