Froth Atop a Latté

High weaving heather, thrown this way and that on each whim of the high weaving winds.

Bright sunshine clowns tumble my stomach – tighten; slacken; contort.

Piercing chills prickle my skin, skimming jaggedly in my flowing blood tubules.

Warm breezes freshen my brow lines, lift the left and the right of my lips up into moon dimples.

How I melt into nature’s forces as I sit. Of course I’m early. Usually I’m late. But this day and time, I’m so very early. Yet I’m forty years late.

Carmen – she’s always been Carmen in my head. I’m no romantic, but he was my fiery gypsy and me an Irish Roman Catholic – a role swap for my personal version of the opera. Eight months following this world weary, enduring cliché of seduction and abandonment, my life was redirected, just shy of sixteen. 1981 trapped and shamed me the harlot of our church, a stigma on my family. And as surely night follows day, it was get-thee-to-a-nunnery, or rather the nun’s laundry.

A decade searching, requesting, filing. A decade of secrets piled atop those stacked the preceding thirty years. ‘Murky waters’ doesn’t do it justice. Ten years of lies and hidden truths I tucked under the ironing pile, a pile in perpetual motion; both never completely dealt with. And husband of seven years – he who doesn’t do domestic! Yep, I’ve got one of those, but hey, my advantage. And never one for questioning, he bought my scar story, the one under which my uterus was removed. You see, those Magdelene nun bitches had the ear of the obstetrician snip her tubes and the Catholic bastard obliged; make them very very short and the misogynist made sure I’d never need his services again – let that learn her! Years after this caesarian section-sterilisation, in my cosy normal marriage, tiny feet did not patter. Medical notes accessed – ah, that’ll be why. Shh, mustn’t tell.

Time is tick-tocking, hooking my thoughts, memories. I sit, not sipping a cooling latté, stuck in my past, here in the courtyard of The Starlight fair trade café, Carmen’s - no no – Charmaine’s suggestion. Contrasting yet similar names – a nod to my choice? Emotions jostle their sparring match –

She’s mine, but not

Stolen, but given away

Choices, but no choices

–

bubble my emotions.

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my emotions bubbled as I grew – the  You’re our chosen child   the  You’re our rescued child   the  God’s gift to us  trickled into my empty head and gathered, herded, corralled – puddled over the years, then swamped – the trigger absolutely embedded in my head, in my solar plexus, my viscera –it was that documentary, a repeat from way back that I saw forty years ago, a New Year’s telly thing, can’t recollect what it was called but definitely remember as if it’s on a loop within my glasses’ lenses; about forced adoption, about those kids (orphans, they were told, huh) sent to Australia – for their own good! going to nice homes! fooled! skivvies a lot of them; you couldn’t make it up, and being kids, you know, they didn’t have a voice and it was this documentary that flooded my foster child anx-puddle I’d nurtured until it pulsed up from my guts and almost burst from me – a bit like that old film in which the alien bursts out of its mother’s belly – oh yeah it was called Alien; the documentary that finally kicked it off, with this Gemma in Australia who at the time was the same age as me bar a few months, and you know how weird that is when you can relate so precisely with someone? well, it was when Gemma saw her birth certificate FOR THE FIRST TIME! and it was one of those WOW! moments for both her and me, and I now feel akin with her because she tipped my flood into a splurge of questions and exclamations of pulsing shock waves all while I was sitting there neatly with mum and dad – my second family, sitting there with this huge mega flood and I had to statue myself to keep it under because if I’d released just a drip then it would rip me and I think my parents would have thought Beelzebub had thrust into their lives and well, they’re nice people, godly people and they’d done good adopting me and I behaved good for them because they’d adopted me – their chosen child

then the secrets just stacked after that (made a promise, a resolution to find her, my mum – well it was a new year . . . ), you know all the paperwork I kept hidden and I had to pretend to the agencies that we had no phone because we were godly people, weird but they bought it, and I got Belle to let me use her address for EVERYTHING and the agency agreed to that as well – actually, as I’m thinking about it, they probably saw through all that crap but understood the whys, probably wouldn’t be surprised – seen it all before

and there she was MY MUM! well, on paper at least – she’d made enquiries! MY MUM was looking for me! and you know, when you’re feeling you’re being smart and got control, well you always get this massive kick and that’s what I got when I saw my mum’s name and address – and really and truly there was another mega flood of feelings and emotions, an avalanche greater than I’d ever known

~~~

and there she is – my mum, sitting on a courtyard seat, seems to be in a dolly daydream… latté froth atop her mug, and remember those floods of mine? kept in, tucked down till now, these tears salty and relieving and painful pop out of me as I stare at her as she stares at me, and she must have the same floods because her face is 

wet

and

salty

with

relief

and

pain

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And there she is! I know it’s her – the image of me fifteen years ago, when I had fewer and shallower crinkles littering the skin on my face.

My glorious daughter

Relief

Wonder

Hope

Guilt