In a world where children are born out of memories… you and I can have children.
It matters not that we are two women living alone in the wild country where there are no men or donors or lost children to take in. We are together and we are always making memories.
So, by the rules of the world we find ourselves in, we are always making children.
The first time we met you made me oatmeal, asking my name over breakfast. We sat shoulder to shoulder on the kitchen bench overlooking the earliest days of spring. Daffodils peeking out of the grass covered in frost from the long night before, only just beginning to melt into dew.
I didn’t know at the time that from that point forward all my poems would be circling the feeling of sitting so close to you, looking out in the same direction that day, thoughts of real life and its struggles so far away.
That memory is our first child. His eyes are the colour of a dewy, just-melted frost. His skin the colour of the oatmeal we shared, freckled like the chia seeds and granola you garnished our breakfast with. His personality, fresh as chopped apples and deep as the dark chocolate I added to our bowls.
It’s hard to say who our next born was, for we made so many new memories each day.
Perhaps it was that afternoon in the greenhouse, watching the pheasants walk through the vegetable patch, making meek conversation that was tiptoeing around the boulder in my chest: I LIKE YOU – A LOT. Oh, how will I ever say these words aloud ?
Instead of speaking the truth of the things inside of myself, I asked if you wanted to dance in the rain. You gently reminded me that it wasn’t raining, but all I could think was well of course, that’s why we have to dance! And so we did.
We danced and I fell and you sang, and I sang back those magical notes of the wilderness.
Our second child was born then. Her greatest love is dancing in the rain. Her biggest fear is the expression of love in words. Her singing voice is as wild and true as the melodies that brought her into being, the moment she was conceived.
There is something so tangibly sweet about seeing our children play together. To know that they are ours and ours alone. To know that they will live for as long as we will live and that they are just as real as anyone else’s children. To know that they are the product of two people coming together in love, you and I.
Two writers, two singers, two lovers: two mothers.
Words by Mai Hindawi, a writer and multimedia artist working primarily with found poetry, animation and collage. More of their short writing and artwork can be found on maihindawi.art/blog (Editor’s note: an amazing, amazing blog).
Artwork and photograph by Mai Hindawi
Mai wrote this text within the writers’ workshop “You Memory is Fiction” (2023), facilitated by Kandaka’s Chief-Editor and Co-Founder Amuna Wagner.
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