Joy of all joy, light of all light, love of all loves; my wee bird celebrated his third circle around the sun.
My son.
My sun.
My one.
Each time his birthday has come around I’ve been shocked by the feelings; so many & so deep & so vast & fierce & overflowing.
The way these feelings seem somehow to mirror the stage he is navigating at the time, somehow.
This year his birthday was delicately tied up with the full pink moon, the one he was born under, and I found myself, in the days before his birthday, unable to sleep, racked with overwhelm and grief and worry.
It passed though, as all emotions do, and I came out of it with a deep and unshakeable desire to work with my hands.
To make something for him and me both, to make use of the frenetic, powerful energy.
Haptic healing.
And so this is how it looked.
We sat together outside as the wrens flew low in the ivy, as the tree creeper wound her way up the beech, as the sun called the butterflies to the dandelions.
We sat together and I managed, for two glorious hours, to forget about every other thing in this world that is calling for my limited, frazzled attention. I left my phone inside, only fetching it when the colours of my son’s old clothes begged me to capture them, to share them with others who might value the picture of them, too. I forgot about all the deadlines I have no idea how I’ll meet. About all the worries I’ve been carrying about mothering in this moment, about the fears of how my own childhood experiences
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