lucila soto

Ten years should seem like a milestone, like an important amount of time. Being human cycles matter… counting, adding up, the marking of the days.

And specially in these pandemic days. Yes, they are notable by themselves these days, they mark a before and after, the new normal of distancing, lockdowns and of giving new value to common things we -sometimes- took for granted.

But these ten years, well they make a difference but also no difference at all.
I mean to say that of course things have changed. I’m a mother now so I know fear as never before. I live in a different place that sometimes feels like a different world, so now I know loneliness as never before.

Don’t get me wrong, life is good, I would not have it any other way, but in ten years I’ve matured and that only means that I’ve been touched by all that stuff that takes naïveté from you: harshness, pain, solitude, accountability, ennui. The sort.

Ten years. It keeps coming back, as if it should be somehow bigger, or maybe smaller? Truth is Father, if I let myself go that way I’m still a mess. It still feels fresh and a void as dark and deep as the morning after you were gone. I love you, and love is eternal and I miss you and I will forever do so. Your smile most of all.

Being a parent has mainly made me even more aware of you, of Mother too. How you managed with me and how immensely happy and proud and valued and secure I felt all along my life with you. It was your doing. I can’t but to thank to have such a vast collection of memories to revisit time and time again and -during this ten year path- to understand and see in different, ever evolving hues.

I will always be amazed on how much you were able to give. Selflessly, unconditionally, naturally. And after ten years I keep on getting from you. This is the best legacy and I’m forever grateful. That’s when it hits me, you’re not gone, not truly.

And you know, sometimes I see it, that smile of yours, drawn right there on the lips of my little child.

He sleeps on my lap while the shock of his reality hits me.

3 months after, for Bruno
How we start as rudimentary beings with not much but basic survival instincts and pure ego amazes and appalls me; it is also very difficult to like. At least well-brought-up folk were meant to dislike selfishness, intolerance and impatience. These are what a new born is all about.
A baby is a young-man’s job -a friend said- or a woman’s I should add, so I feel more tired than words can describe and lack of sleep is showing in a bad way.
But it is -just as I once read- at 4:30 in the morning while changing yet another soiled nappy -feeling all at once exhausted, completely bored and irremediably in love with this little screaming creature laying before me- that it dawns on me: my mother did this for me. For each of us (most of us? the lucky ones?) a mother, a father, a grandmother or some other caregiver did this for us; so in addition I become so grateful I feel like crying.
There is this unfathomable chain that goes back and around each generation, linking us and speaking of the universal word/concept love. No other thing than love can carry you to safe-heaven when confronted with the hard-boiled fact that is a baby and -as a wide and ever-growing list of songs and writings rightfully claim- it is love that will save the day.
There is no corniness in this statement -believe me! I know now I was not born a mother, but I sure am learning to become one. I’ll explain: I have no maternal instinct, not feeling in my gut guiding my every action regarding Bruno and I can’t wait -can’t wait- for him to have reasoning and consciousness enough so I can explain and he understands.
Mostly it is scientific approach of trail and error, thesis, etc that I use to solve and overcome the many problems Bruno presents.

It is also him who teaches and guides me every day to understand his needs and cares, some of them patiently and others with rage.
I also know I will not have another baby. The mere fact I have him is one I still haven’t completely made my peace with.
Then again there is no cynicism in that last part. Because there is also love-complete, love-unconditional, love-eternal. The kind you have never felt before and is only reserved to a child: no matter who he is and becomes nor what he does and will do, you will always love him.
So yeah, I love motherhood, I just don’t like it… yet.

Raw to the marrow
Wild and untamed

The strongest character

My sweet undoing

Mischievous smile

Gloriously clear laughter

A never clenching thirst of learning

A relaxed elegance of teaching

Each day a challenge,

Each day a triumph
Time goes running,

days becoming lifetimes

A concept child who became

a twister made flesh,

a veritable force of nature

Here, now softly breathing

Resting between my arms.
There’s pride in life now

A proud mother of a proud child

Unstoppable feelings

Comme l’orage, comme la tempête

Only growing: larger, stronger.
A year and a half to celebrate

The certainty of true and

unstoppable love, richness in life

My child -yes, my child!-

forever and forever more.

Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

-Blaise Pascal

The worst year of my life. I’m not being dramatic nor exaggerating; simply put, I have lead quite a nifty life; well that was up to this past year.

This past year -his first year- has been quite a bumpy road for me. For starters there was the physical harshness of it: sleep deprivation, recovery from surgery, hormones bumping from here to there like crazy, breastfeeding (it’s a nightmare, a nightmare I tell you!), arms numbed from carrying him around, and so forward.

Then there’s the quasi complete annihilation of self: no time for even a shower, 24-hour of constant vigilance, getting strained from friends and family due to lack of free time, not being able to do those little thing/pleasures that used to make life special and worth living.

Relinquish is the right word. I did relinquish my former self and now I’m first a mother and then all the rest. Even the parts that I can still do -which I love to do, such as running, reading, knitting, writing or yoga- have been completely altered. They now are touched by his presence, his ever demanding needs, whims and desires. They are time constricted and modified. Everything in my life is.

Then there’s the real hard part. That part when you get to confront yourself in complete earnest to find out how -priorities now changed- plainly clueless you were.

Yes, I did enjoy and love those carefree times. My life nothing but my own, consequences only affecting me, responsibilities only to myself.

Then again, today I find myself different. The learning experience of it all is terrifyingly humbling. I’ve been forced to recognize how wrong I had it.

Today I find myself fearless (as all mothers are) and so focused on making myself better (more coherent, more strict with myself, more demanding) so I can teach by example.

Still, there’s the good –really good–part of it. He’s taught me the importance of mindfulness. I now know what trust complete is as he extends his open arms towards me.

I smile more, more frankly also, as he shows me each day how true to one self we naturally are (then society comes and blah, blah… a discussion for some other time).

And so, one day at a time, the worst year of my life ended. I have mixed feelings about it and there is much I would prefer not to live ever again.

But there’s no denying it, if you see with care and attention, in every one of the pictures where I’m carrying him in arms it isn’t him who is holding on to me; it is me that holds on to him tightly with heart and soul. My new center, my column, my eternal love, my world.

Ready or not, year two, here we go.

Because of the brief and extremely rare moments of pure, undiluted beauty.

Because of that uplifting feeling of having complete control that lasts only for a blink.

Because of innocence lost whenever a sunset ceases to allure.

Because the essence of discovery and awe awakens in every generation once more.

Because of consciousness gained after that void left by loss.

Because of caring words spoken late or, worst yet, left unspoken.

Because of the evasive and unquenchable struggle for pleasure.

Because in every smile lays hope.

Because a child within its tiny hand a mother’s heart captive holds.

Because the farthest star we always dream to reach.

Because that tune a clever man composed for eternity to behold.

Because of sadness and joy attested in centuries past. 

Because the enormity of the possible and paths mistaken.

Because of human ephemeral condition and all that wasted time.

Is this why the Willow weeps?

A wide heart to love you

Strong arms to hold you

A creative mind to understand you

Tenderness lots to give you.
Melodic words to sooth you

A wise temper to mold you

A tough spirit to impress upon you

A mighty body to nurture you.
Never-ending strength to take care of you

Awareness full for the sleepless nights

A brave will to accompany you

Savvy intuition to heal you.
Amazing stories to tell you

Tempered beliefs to guide you

A hat full of tricks to amuse you

Agility plenty to watch over you.
Love eternal to teach you

so the world you’ll inherit

is one of respect, compassion

and kindness

And in turn you’ll have:
Love eternal to spread around

Wise words to speak truths

A wide heart of compassion

Amazing stories to build.

Begins as a concept a drafted idea

That turns into a feeling

And undiluted hope

As you evolve

Change comes

Tiny first but growing

Making his presence a new center

The reason of it all.

Big belly days have begun

Still -an epic, a poem,

The biggest change of them all

Comes from within

Beliefs challenged, put to test

Modified and realigned

A Mother, a mother I will become.

Recalling

Earliest memories of them all

My mother’s caring ways

My grandmother molding me

Warmth and love; wisdom and teachings for life

In turn I will profess to my child

Inherited, instinctive, old as time

Incredibly clear as a bright morning

From a new day’s dawn.

These are the enlightened days:

Fruitful, provocative and significant;

You have taken me, rewritten anew

Inhabit me making me whole

A child-bearing force of nature

Primal, ancient, fearless: yours.

In awe I awoke to these big-belly days

Opening up to emotion and grace

New rhythms I danced with you my child

Eternally in love with you.

It’s internal, this glow

new meaning and strength

A daredevil of hope -what a force!

A mother I have become.

Heart pumping wildly
Mind loosely flying
Eyes catching on each other
Smiles shinning brightly
We meet in enclosing embrace
And we breath from each other.

Hand in hand we walk, we play
We fly, we learn, we experiment
We discover, we travel, we get wiser
We agree but most importantly we dream.

We catch our reflection
In each other’s eyes
In sweet intimacy
Your hand takes mine
It’s a sigh, it’s a whisper
It’s a moan, it’s a tender cry
In the end just breathing
In warm conspiracy
As we lay side by side.

A breath makes us closer
Gives reason and path
We breath even easier
As we frequently laugh
The strength and the purpose
Gives us will to search and desire
To build and to crave
That this breathing of living
As teaching, as legacy passes on
And we can give it a life of its own

It’s a morning kiss
An evening delight
A sunset walking heart in heart
A night’s low, soft voice
That makes my soul soothe
Just breath every second
Own it and enjoy
For life is pleasure, magnificent joy.

Like a wave it comes.
Not from a calm and gentle sea;
Like in early morning hour of my childhood
In that Caribbean blue,
Where we used to swim.

The shock of cold,
Furious water shakes me.
Shakes my brain,
Shakes me to the core.

Five years have come and gone by,
But the void still remains.
As fresh as that morning news,
Bringing much sorrow
Of dark abstruse magnitude.

I have surrendered to it,
Although I have carefully refrained
To explore its depths.
It is a pain, a lack of certainty
That since your loss inhabits me.

It has made me matured,
In ways all daughters must
Even if it pains the soul.
Now your presence I miss,
But as sure as I carry this void
With each step I take
You are within me.

Father,
Only in your absence
I was able to known that true legacy,
More than the glory days you lived
-for your life was rich and fruitful
As few will be.

It is the legacy of good men
Who knew how to love,
How to teach the important:
Being earnest and true
To that which is believed.

Father,
Without vanity, without disloyalty
No egoism but curiosity,
Thirst for wonder,
Hunger for knowledge.
All this traits are mine to keep.

Father,
Dearest to me
You always will be,
Forever cherished and
Forever missed.
This is the void I carry within.