Interval reflections

That’s what they say. ‘Life is just a waiting game’. Waiting for what exactly, who knows! 

When you’re young, adults tell you ‘Wait until you get older then you can stay up late, wear lipstick, go out, do this and that….’ On and on it goes. 

I’ve grown up and done tons of stuff, things that were probably unimaginable to even dream up when I was that child, like hitchhiking around Australia, living in a tent for 6 months, searching for love in hot foreign places, staying up for days dancing euphorically with friends that meant more than that. Living rather than waiting, which I’m doing now, which I’ve been doing for some time.

Sitting on a low cushioned, high backed chair with my arms resting on its wooden frame I contemplate what actually living life at this moment would entail. My mind casts me back to memories of distant travels, this particular time in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The humid climate with its temporal sky set the backdrop for many people to go about their daily life. From my 4th floor window, I had a great view of the happenings below, such as the elderly workman clothed only in a  lungi, hammering at used bricks, mountains of bricks hammered into to red dust, recycled to be used again.  His task a specific one, like that of the rickshaw drivers taking customers to and fro destinations or street hawkers peddling their merchandise.  It seems to me now that the people I was amongst were actually living life, they weren’t constraint by time or obsessed with how long.  This only affirms my view that I have been wasting my time trying to get through parts of my life as quickly as possible, biding time until the next step.  

I recognize now that I actually stopped really living in my early 30’s when my hormones decided to dictate what I wanted. I had been adamant till then that I did not ever want children but that all changed somehow and it was out of my control, I couldn’t look at a baby without feeling a huge wave of sadness and frustration. For a few years it was basically a waiting game, wait till the time of the month to see if you’re pregnant, wait till you are the most fertile, wait to see your gynecologist, wait for inconclusive test results  ... wait, wait, wait! Meanwhile, other women around you are falling pregnant, be it intentionally or not, some for the first time others for the last. It was a hard time, it seemed the world was conspiring against me, everywhere I turned mothers were cooing over their babies, scolding their toddlers, arguing with their teens or sharing a profound moment with them and I was left mulling over what life would be without a child to love. When it finally happened, joy was short-lived as some weeks after I miscarried. I was told by those closest to me that it proved that I could get pregnant and to wait until next time, next time happened sooner than I had anticipated, so then began another round of waiting, waiting until it was safe enough to tell people the happy news, waiting for my next hospital appointment and waiting for the birth. Nine months seem to last inexplicably long, in that time we managed to translocate back to England from Italy and see my father grow steadily unwell and adjourn to his death bed. 

Once I had had the baby, numbers overtook my life;  times, dosages, amounts, and weights. Every two hours she would wake up and have one to two ounces at each feeding, weighed, and measured two weeks to six months. Worrying over how much she ate, how much she slept, how much she weighed, and grew. It didn’t end there, waiting to decipher whether their developmental milestones were going to be achieved accrued more than its fair share of anxiety. It’s only now as I sit and look over at her that I resent wasting that time over fruitless worrying.  I have always said to myself, expect the worst to happen. It was to prepare myself for any awfulness,  my husband was always annoyed at the way I worried, he slept like a baby himself but how could I when I was in charge of one? My priority was keeping her safe which ultimately, I failed to do.  

Flicking through a gossip magazine, casting eyes over disparaging articles on the weight gain or lifestyle choice of some unknown celebrity my thoughts wander to that moment that led us here. It’s disturbing the way the mind works, this is the last thing I want to be thinking about but reliving the actuality always brings forth some new piece of guilt, the list of what-ifs! That day will probably always stay with me forever, the soft breeze against my skin, the clear sky above. We had been cycling that morning and were just turning into the local shops for a treat my daughter was demanding when her impatience for the sweet chewy treats to be in her mouth got the better of her that she cycled on ahead of me, only slightly mind. I had made sure she was at a hearing distance but maybe the breeze had distorted my words because she didn’t hear me when I yelled to her to stop at the corner but by that time it was too late.  I had frozen, watching from another realm, as she rode into an oncoming vehicle, a red car ironically, her blood seeping the same shade so it seemed. After that, I cannot account for anything, only that I am here waiting for you to wake up after a craniotomy, a critical operation to determine the state of your brain injury.  The doctor warned me that the general anesthesia could take several hours to wear off and then to expect grogginess.  As my eyes look up from the magazine I’m sure I see your eyes flicker. I call over the nurse who obediently comes to us, she monitors my daughter while my heart thumps away in my chest, nausea rising. The nurse says she will get the doctor to assess her conscious level, I meanwhile try to decipher her responses to my presence and wait for her to respond when I call out her name ‘ Amina, Amina can you hear me, darling? It’s me, mummy ‘.

1073 words.