Lexi-Blue Sky
Lexi…
you are the prettiest shade of blue
I’ve ever imagined.
You are billows of
blue cashmere and silvery grace
gently fluttering your beautiful wings
with the magic and sparkle
of a shimmery fairy.
A benevolent blue butterfly
of bold strength and
lavender tenderness.
Last week, I called you to beg if I could text you a photo. I had taken a photo of the sky right that minute because its color was EXACTLY your shade of blue; the exact color I could never pinpoint before! The exact color didn’t translate perfectly into the photo, but I was moved to tears seeing the sky YOUR color. I was transported back in time to the first moment I saw and felt your color. I was overcome with emotion and excitement. Oh how desperately I wanted to share that moment, those memories, or at least the perfect example of your color with you.
I’m so sorry you wouldn’t answer my call or allow me to text you this phenomenon I experienced.
I still remember the first moment I felt you move inside my body. I was sitting in Guernsey Memorial Hospital in Cambridge, Ohio visiting my mother who was having some surgery. It was 1996. I’m horrible with dates, but I️ believe it was late July-ish.<<<<<<<<<<<<
ly in the chair in that hospital room, I felt the strangest sensation out of the sheer blue, like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was like I had a tiny periwinkle blue butterfly fluttering softly deep down in the core of my very being. Little subtle graceful yet specific, movements I could only describe like a butterfly flapping its wings slowly…delicately.
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xplain to you how or why I knew it was blue. From that moment for the rest of your life, up to and including today, the color I immediately associate with you is the deepest, prettiest, softest blue. It's precise shade or name I've never found, but it's something like if you blended my favorite blue crayons(periwinkle and cornflower) from my cherished 64-box of crayons with the sharpener I'd had when I was in grade school.<<<<<<<<<<<<
-Blue".
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didn’t say anything… at first, because I thought it too soon for you to be moving enough for me to feel it yet, so I tried to tell myself it was just my imagination. But I’d never felt anything like it, and i somehow instinctively knew it was you – you moving about and softly stretching out. Everything I'd read on your development (I lived with my What to Expect When You’re Expecting book by my side) said it was way too soon for that, but I knew it was you. I just knew it.
I sat there just smiling inside, not outside though, I didn’t want to upset my mother…ok well, maybe I couldn’t help but allow a tiny sneaking smile at what we were sharing in that moment. Otherwise, I was just in awe and intentional stillness. I️ didn’t want to move and risk startling you or maybe disrupt whatever you were doing. I didn’t know if moving would make you feel unsure, unsteady, or unsafe and I had no one to trust this with in that precious moment.
I was quite lonely at this point in my life, begging for my mother’s love and approval plus mind-blowing abuse tactics from your father. I had no one to trust. It took all my strength to assess and cope with the daily events of trying to balance keeping my sanity while desperately trying to balance two narcissist’s impossible demands. My beloved cat, Porsche, was my very best friend and the being whom I talked to non-stop about you, your development, my fears and hopes, everything… But Porsche wasn’t in Ohio with me.didn’t want Darlene to mock me for being so silly.. since it was so early in my pregnancy with you.. You were only around 6 weeks gestation, after all and this was the most astounding and tender moment I’d ever known, I didn’t want to give anyone the chance to belittle or disregard it. I wanted more than anything to tell someone about this awesome, breathtaking moment, but I kept it to myself because it was our very first shared moment ever and I felt fiercely protective of it and preserving it in time meant meant keeping it safely between us.was always nervous visiting Darlene, so much so that I’d usually break out into hives on my way to Cambridge. And this time was no exception. I was a bundle of fear, nerves, and walking on eggshellsaving the hospital, I pondered it all. I felt as though you knew I was scared and unsure and nervous and for the first time in my entire life, I didn’t feel all alone. It was is if you sensed my fear and fluttered about right that very moment to reassure me that you were there and we were in this together …and as long as we had each other, we would always be just fine.was smiling the whole time leaving the hospital, as if I had a glorious precious secret… And my backbone grew a little bit from this with a determination to love and protect you from the confusing cruelty which I’d had with my mother and although on my own now, was still dealing with daily in my relationship with your dad.was unsure about recent events with your dad back in Memphis at the time – things hadn’t been going well. I was scared to death of my mother’s judgment, anger, and disappointment in me at my being pregnant with you and I had no idea what path our lives would take the rest of my pregnancy or after you were born. I just knew that come what may, I would protect you with all the strength I never knew I even had in me before this moment we shared and I knew come what may we would move forth in this life. I️ knew I would make sure you always have a momma who loved you and that you’d never doubt that for a moment of your life. I didn’t know how I’d be and show you what I’d never had or known, but I was determined I would find a way
My fears of life and the world ahead of us were overwhelming and crippling, but I knew in that moment that we would both learn together the true joy that unconditional love could bring. I imagined you as a tiny, but fierce feathery blue angel, fluttering about like a teeny butterfly-fairy in my womb. Even so little, I realized it was you who gave me strength and grace – the very strength I’d never had and the very grace I’d never known before.
Lexi-blue butterfly wishes
<br
e brought to mind a poem I always loved by Mary Oliver. Wild Geese.
<br the strangest, most wonderful and amazing feeling. For the first time in my entire 25 years, after a lifetime of uncertainty and confusion about what love without fear and pain really felt like, I knew, without a doubt, the cavernous infinite depth of what a mother’s love should be, would be, and somehow already was.
