The dreams of you

November 7, 2009

I am becoming my mother. It's 1:10 a.m. and I am awake and so I write. My entire life I have memories of waking up in the night to find a light on in a room somewhere in the house and there is my mom curled up in her robe, writing in her journal. Like mother like daughter.

It was 6:00 p.m. The sky had just turned dark, but streaks of hot pink floated in the darkness leftover from the sunset. I took the back roads home through the reservation, past the San Xavier Mission. The sight of the white mission softly lit against the dark sky caused my chest to tighten. The coolness of the night air washed over me with the windows down and moon roof open. Emmylou was whispering in melodies to me, words that caught my ears. She sang of a lover, but I think of you, my daughter:

"In my imagination, you are my dear companion, and I'm the one you cling to, and your voice still calls my name . . ."

"In my dreams you are the swallow, coming back to Capistrano, and I'm the sound of the bells you follow, but in this world dreams don't come true."

"Still when you're lost out in the desert, when your fire's a dying ember, the last light you'll remember will be the light I shed for you."

"Mine's an ordinary star love, I see exactly where you are love, and no one else could shine that far love, to bring you safely through."

"And though you say you do not want me, and made no promises to haunt me, I will dream my dream of you."

"The sorrow's low down like a fountain, over the miles beyond our counting, more than the flowers of the mountain or the raindrops in the sea, but if heaven's just a dreaming, surely my love will be redeeming, and you will dream your dream of me."

Only I was your mother. You were so much more than the tissues growing inside me. After all, aren't we all more than the tissues so tentatively strung together? Am I not a compilation of thoughts and dreams and feelings and memories to the people who love me? We shared a battle, didn't we? We fought together. I survived. You didn't. As your mother sometimes I wonder, though you had no language or memory, what did you know? Did you know I was your mother? I think we were probably more alike during that time than we could have ever been at any other time. The battle had me whittled down to my core, down to that instinct written in my DNA to survive. That was all my energy allowed. You were like that too, weren't you? Sweet little girl, did you go softly? It's all I can bear sometimes to think about a life dying inside me. It breaks my heart that I couldn't do more. And I miss the dreams of you.