At the very moment Saffron decided she would gather flowers for her happiness, Ellen stood on her balcony three doors north and heard the baby grizzle for her breast. Ellen had cried for the days when her body was her own. When the moments of sunshine belonged to her alone. Now, her health, her sleep, her every movement was commanded by the endless needs of a tiny other. A life that she had nurtured in her belly, spoken to in her dreams at night and finally pushed screaming into the light. She loved that dimply, round-eyed creature with all of her body—she’d not known love like this before—but her soul sighed for the carefree moments of her youth. When she wandered with the clouds and under bridges. When she could spend afternoons looking for mermaids in the green waters of the harbour. When her heart would beat double time at the sight of Adil, her Moroccan lover, as he strummed his strings and let his fine dark hair fall across his face. How the nonchalance of youth now desperately eluded her.
A gentle breeze picked up and the baby murmured in time with the sighing gums. As she stepped over the threshold and entered the little flat, a warm acceptance flooded her exhausted body. She remembered her good fortune: to have ever walked with clouds and seen the harbour’s bathing sirens, to have made love to Adil in the hours before daybreak at all, she knew she had more gems in her chest than most. And these hard, long days were not final. She greeted her most precious treasure with a coo, and lifted the sleepy girl to her breast. The tiny fingers grasped at Ellen’s flesh, and she was always surprised at the strength the little one possessed. Thank the stars, she thought to herself. These years won’t be easy, my sweet. Your father lives only in you. His spirit is watching from the skies above, but these earthly days are yours and mine alone.
As if she understood her mother’s thoughts, the tiny girl looked up and into Ellen’s eyes and then to the moon that hung in the window. A little sound hummed from her as she breathed in and greedily suckled for milk.
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