the girl who let windows be her eyes

If windows could grow they would grow straight into the girl’s face.  If windows could be the eyes into another person’s soul, the girl would have these eyes.  

I want to tell you a story.  Usually I only want to write about beautiful things because so many sad things have happened to me.  So I want to tell you a story.  Perhaps it will be sad, perhaps not.  I believe that every person is gifted with individuality, that their eyes see what’s in front of them but each eye offers a different lens.  Be your own lens, see how you want to see.  But listen, please.  

If we were all shoes, created only for the capacity to mold and shape to the part of people that moved them someplace, this girl would be a dirty, well-worn chaco.  She would get used everyday, a source of comfort, a bright pattern, a travel bud, a resilient and withstanding shoe.  If this girl was a shoe.  She is so many things but faulty is not one of them, broken-soles is not a characteristic she possesses.   This girl is the strongest, most versatile of all.  A true molder in the world.  A true lover.  A true dreamer, energist, entertainer, and comforter.  My story isn’t necessarily altogether about this girl.  But perhaps girls in general, kids in general.  

Babies are one of the world’s favorite things.  While something so special, so pure, and so innocent causes so many mixed feelings: heartache, confusion, desperation, joy, gratitude, elation.  A baby is a celebration of life or a terror of it.  A baby can be the world’s biggest creation and the world’s biggest fear.  So much power in the tiniest of cells.  And perhaps that’s a good thing.  Power in smallness and responsibility in creation.  Perhaps, it would be unnatural for it to be so casual, misunderstood, conflicted.  The worn-down chaco girl could talk forever about her babies, the one’s that never breathed air, but to do so she would need a lot of liquid courage.  To do so would be taking a blow torch to one’s own heart and never looking back.  To talk about this girl’s babies would cause a wildfire amidst every woman to ever carry a human inside themselves.  

I wish I knew better.  I wish I had been older, smarter, kinder, wiser, but I was none of those things.  I wish I had the voice that I do now.  The strength, the courage, the determination.  But I had none of those things.  I was projected with a voice that was meek and whispers. I was given a tone that was heartless and unkind.  I was clothed in apathy and cruelty.  I wish I was more, had been more, but I wasn’t.  Knit booties, the smallest of all feet become the biggest in my eyes.  Feet that had wanted to run, skip, and jump but were told by the person who made them that they weren’t fit to touch this earth.  That a claim of choice had decided for them.  As a young girl, I of course, knew best for another creature.  And determined to stake a claim in that.   

So what now?  She asks everyday.  What do my babies see now that they’re not here, seeing what I’m seeing.  Or perhaps they still do.  Perhaps the pieces that still remain inside me get to travel with my eyes.  Or maybe my nose. My tongue.  My hands.  Or best of all, my feet.  Maybe they grow in my heart and become my shoes.  Or maybe they will never see what I see because the choice for them not to was already made.  The choice for their lips to never move and their hands to never open was made for them.  So who am I to be sad.  Who am I to be unhappy.  Who am I to miss the things I never knew.  Or maybe not that, who am I to miss the things I never will be able to have again.  Because of a choice.  One choice.  One selfish, irresponsible, cruel foundation of a choice.  

What a nuisance.  What a life-altering time.  But the windows we look out of never seem to gaze back.  Forever a portal to the outside world looking in and the inside world looking out, always wanting to be where you’re not.  Always wanting who you don’t have.  

Her babies lay in a field, so safe, so secure, so loved.  They are wrapped in knit blankets of pastels with hats that are too bunchy and baggy, covering their ears and a near half of their beautiful green eyes.  We love that about them: their mama’s eyes are always shining back at us.  We miss her, we really do.  And we want her to be with us everyday.  Holding us, singing to us, teaching us how to walk and move, breathe air and love life.  But we must not do any of these things until she’s here to teach us, until she can show us what life is like, we stay wrapped and trapped in the knit blankets, gentle breeze sneezing our button noses, the one’s our mama gave us.  We love to wait.  We can’t wait for the wait to be no longer a wait but we love to wait because we know who we are waiting for.  Someone so wonderful.  Someone so pure.  Someone so loving.  The best mama.  We will wait.