Seeing you again

I can’t express how wonderful it is to be with you again, and to see you looking so well. Time has truly been kind to you. After all these years apart, I had almost lost hope of ever seeing your face again. So much time has passed, yet now, here we are, together, reunited at last.

I remember those early years well, watching as your mother raised you from the crib to those first stumbling steps of a boundless child. Your energy and sense of adventure was enthralling, and to watch you laugh and play, your much cherished toys and stuffed animals, blue bear swinging from your hand or clutched to your chest, depending on your disposition or the time of day. Those early days, you barely gave me a fleeting glimpse, such was your time of pure innocence and untainted love and joy. Sometimes as your mother held you in her arms, or the two of you stood knitted together, hand in hand, she would stop and speak with me. You’d wave and say ‘hello’ in your early childlike way. You were pure joy and enchantment and my heart was captivated.

Those years of innocence, so many times your infectious giggles and laughter caused me to smile. There was an occasion one rainy April afternoon, I think you were about four years old, your mother was absorbed in her chores and being a curious and inquisitive child, you’d found your way into her vanity case, discovering the lipsticks and powders within. Oh, your little face when you showed me, with bright red lips, rather large and lopsided, and peacock blue eye-shadow smudged over your eyelids and most of your forehead. You chuckled and grinned with glee, and I couldn’t help but laugh too. So enchanting you were, that even your mother couldn’t be cross with you, she made such a fuss about the clown that had appeared, and wanted to know what the clown had done with her little girl.

As you grew, from those first stumbling steps to the wonder and confidence of a beautiful child discovering the world, you would speak to me at times, often accompanied by one of your small companions including your beloved blue bear. You’d recount to me the wonderful fairy tales that your mother shared with you whilst sitting by the fire together, or of the butterflies you’d seen in the garden, and how you and blue bear had chased them in the afternoon sun, through you had not caught any, not even the one that settled a while on the heavily scented roses. You showed me the fine pink petals though, as with fumbling fingers and bobby pins, you attempted to secure them in your hair. You’ll never know how much I loved sharing those precious moments with you, when we gazed at the same skies, the same stars, seeing the same, however different our perspectives.

You grew so quickly. That cherub-like infant with chubby arms and legs, soon grew taller and your limbs became long and graceful. You found your voice and a love of singing and I would often watch as you danced to your favourite songs and sang along using your hairbrush as a microphone. I would try to sing too, though my voice was lost, fallen into the gap in the universe that seemed to keep you near but always so far away. I understood that was my part to play, a constant in your steps through life, and though there was such a chasm, there were times when I felt closer to you than you could ever imagine.

As your teenage years flew by, the hairbrush, no longer a child’s plaything, became an essential part of your ritual, gliding through your glossy dark hair, as you turned your head from side to side, scrutinising your looks, doubting your own beauty. More and more I saw less and less of your glorious smile, your face became sullen, devoid of the innocent charm of the earlier years. You no longer sang or danced and I wished desperately that I could reach out to you, tell you how beguilingly pretty you were, how you were blossoming into a beautiful young woman. Nothing seemed to help. The times I heard slamming doors and shouting voices, you and your mother at odds. Such difficult years. The childish scribbles of lipstick and powder became a memory of the past as you began to paint your face in a new way, extending your lashes, enhancing your lips to a full pout. Your true and innate beauty always lay within, I could see the flashes of it, when your battle with life, with growing, had tired you, and you were sweet and vulnerable, your pale face in the early morning or at night, a visage of natural sweetness and perfection. I was always there, always watching and willing the universe to guide you and help you to discover the right path.

Later in your teens, the war paint that had protected you through the early years of high school, took on a shadowy hue. You darkened your nails and your eyes, your lips too, often black or the deepest shade of crimson. I watched silently one moonlit October evening when seated like a high priestess, you lit candles, searching in the dark, the recesses of worlds that you were desperate to understand, beyond the life that you had, and oh, the pain as you took a small knife to your arms, the help I could not give, only to watch and to pray that time would heal you, that those years of seeking meaning and purpose would eventually find their destiny.

And yet they did. You found your way through those darker days, the warrior within you, and you bloomed, you were glorious, a metamorphosis of the most extraordinary kind. You studied hard, you worked into the night, hours spent with your head stooped over your desk, your long dark hair, a cloak over your shoulders. The angst and turbulence eased away and a sense of harmony, an aura of happiness returned and your new found direction and confidence was wonderful to see and I wished it would never end.

And then you vanished from my existence. The day I watched as you packed your suitcase, cleared your belongings into boxes, blue bear perched on top, and I was powerless to stop you. There was nothing I could do except bid you a silent farewell and hope that one day I would be with you again.

For years, I continued to see your mother, she would glance at me sometimes and give a small smile, like an old and distant friend, but without you, life was quiet and cold and lonely. Your mother aged and the years went by, some of them fleeting, others felt as though the seasons were dragging forever, compounded by dark winters when I yearned for sunlight to bring brightness again. In the later years, I saw less of your mother. I watched as age ate its way into her, her limbs becoming stiff, her back stooped, and then in the most recent times I have seen nothing of her, and something told me that there had been a shift in the universe and things were about to change.

Little could I have dreamed of that change, until that day when a stranger came through the door and the room filled with light again as they pulled back the dusty curtains that had hung closed for too long. I watched with a mixture of anticipation and fear as the stranger wandered about the room, gently touching the wardrobe, the drawers, running their hand along the old bookcase which had once held all your treasured story books but now stood empty. And then, they moved, on tentative feet, towards the old oak dresser on which I have sat for so many years, and you looked straight at me.

The bevelled glass that surrounds me shone with a renewed green light and as your face reflected in mine, sparkling in the refracted light, a small smile of recognition rippled like a warm tide across our faces. Your hair is different now, shorter, fitting the face of a mature and beautiful woman. There are small creases around your mouth and eyes, fine lines that show me that you have laughed and smiled in the years that we have been apart. You lowered yourself onto the small buffet that sat before me and looked deep into my eyes. I could see into those dark pools, there was grief, and yet there was a sense of relief. And there was still that unmistakable sparkle. You touched your hair, took a lipstick from your bag and added a little colour, subtle, sophisticated. I smiled back at you and then the spell was broken as you stood up, looked around the room once more, and then you were gone.

A sickening fear descended on me as moments later, the door opened and two men that I had never seen before entered the room. They were surly and big and they began to remove the drawers, the wardrobe, the bookcase, back and forth they came, taking one piece at a time, that dark old furniture that I’ve known for so many years. The room was empty but for a small rug and the dresser where I sat. Dread crept over me like the coldest of winters, the longest and most desolate. In that moment when I thought I was no longer alone, that I was destined to suffer a melancholy, singular state yet again. And then, the men returned, they had a big white sheet, I saw their large faces for one moment and then they covered it over me and everything was dark.

I cannot count time in the world in which I exist and I have no recollection of place or movement. I exist in a state of nowhere, of no one, until a moment arrives that pulls me from my lonely slumber. The white sheet is removed and light floods into every nook and crevice that surrounds me, blinding me almost as sunlight reaches through tall crystal like windows, where a light voile curtain gently flutters in the welcome breeze. I absorb my new surroundings, a peaceful room of pale hues and comforting fabrics, and in a corner on a small upholstered chair, I see your old companions and blue bear, and then closer, within a breath, a glorious moment, there is your face, your beautiful face, smiling and radiant. And here we now sit, together once more, you are so changed, yet we remain the same.