Living Light-Birth marks (3)

It’s Autumn and sunny, the hallway light is flickering or the sun is breaching the blinds, casting mutli-colour shadows across the ceiling and towards my feet. I empty the bottle into the sink, watch the water swallow back its acidity. I shake the last remnants of white powder away and drop it into the bin. I know that today my head is going to ache and my body will punish my new found independence. But this is how I know that I have changed beyond the point of return, my entire body is rejecting the past, throwing my limbs towards the horizon and with that; catching cobwebs of a former life which I remove with my palm from resting against the windowpane of our house. The skyline is shining and the light feels pure as it clusters against my skin.

I walk downstairs and can hear the blur from the TV. Annie is eating the last mouthfuls of her cereal and she turns around when I reach the last stair, smiles at me; this small declaration of innocence fills me with hope. I walk into kitchen and fix Annie and Nicholas summer smoothies. Since they were young this has become our tradition, they would watch me wide eyed arranging the fruit along the counter. Annie would twist her mulberry stained fingers around my waist and leave purple-brown stains on my apron. I could never bring myself to remove those marks. These are my children’s birth marks. Nicholas would insist on stealing the ends of the lemon, squinting his caramel eyes like an oyster closing around a pearl, laughing as the bittersweet taste consumed his mouth. Sometimes after breakfast I would find them outside, pockets filled with mulberries, spilling red juice along the lawn, a trail of bright orange autumn leaves.

These days memories float around our living room like ghosts but the ghosts of their childhood survive in their eyelids and I do everything in my power to stop these seconds from burning up in the sunlight. I call them into the kitchen, happy to see Nicholas and Annie smiling. Annie arrives with her shining auburn hair trailing behind her, glowing like shards of lemon ice which I crush with my fingertips into their smoothie mixture. I hand them their smoothies like I am giving out food at a homeless shelter, it is our survival. They push their bodies beneath the oak canvas of the table, Nicholas gulps down the juice and pushes the cup away. It has been two weeks of watching his movements as if he has brought his ship already and him leaving is inevitable. I realise that I have always viewed happiness as if it was something that lives on the wind, I have been peeking for the last six years at our happiness and waiting for the wind to change its direction.

When I gave birth to Nicholas I felt like motherhood would grant me my second chance. I did not realise then how selfish this ideology was until I was a mother. His round face and sand dune cheeks, chiselled into perfect mounds of contentment, left me with an astonishing sense of pride one which I know I can never forget. Once I brought him home, the house was new and its rooms were filled with emptiness and square white walls. Which day after day become occupied with mine and Johnny’s bodies, teaching, showing, learning and glowing with Nicholas’s achievements. And then three years later, came Annie. Her gleaming golden-brown hair shone like a trophy, her sleek almond eyes which glinted green, turquoise, sapphire depending on the light. Now when I think about happiness I think about my children and how suddenly joy wasn’t airborne but nestled in-between their bloodstreams and echoed in their first words.