The Cerebral Mum

It was 9:30pm and I was starting a post about our days at the park. I had pictures. I went over to the pram to grab my camera from the nappy bag hanging off the handles.

It wasn’t there.

And I’d been busy. There were so many photos I hadn’t yet had time to upload on that aptly-named memory card; photos from Mum’s visit, from Caspar’s surgery. Photos from today. Photos which marked an amazing change in Caspar as a little human being. Which I was going to write about.

I remembered putting the camera down beside the red slide when Caspar walked over to me. I remembered going to play on the see-saw, and going to have one last turn on the swings before Big Sis called to see if I would take her to the supermarket. So home we went.

Once my brain had taken that split second to process those movements, I was frozen. I had a sleeping baby in my bedroom but I had to go to the park. I’m lucky. I could. Big Sis, whose house I am living in, was only a step away, watching the football and waiting for pizza with her boyfriend in the house behind us on this dual occupancy lot. They came over to stay with Cas while I sped out onto the road and took a right. Parking half over the curb, I left the lights on and barefoot, wearing only a singlet, I ran outside into the winter, over the grass and over the bark to the red slide.

It wasn’t there.

I drove home still frozen. Big Sis and B came out to meet me and I burst into tears. Not just tears but those deep, sorrowful, heartbroken tears; the kind only a woman can cry, the kind you cry when you know your loss is irrevocable.

I walked into the house. I couldn’t speak. Big Sis, in her dressing gown, came toward me to envelop me in her Big Sis arms but she stepped away from me abruptly when she saw, plain as day, my camera sitting on top of Caspar’s bookshelf.

This is a really funny story. It should be funny. A blind panic from a mother whose brain is still not functioning at full capacity. A mind is a terrible thing to lose. That’s my punchline, right? But I’m not ready to laugh yet.

These digital remnants I get to keep are a drop in the ocean for a mother who, so many times a day, sees something new in her son, sees him grow, sees him change, sees him approach the world from different angles, sees him constantly becoming that little human being she already knew he was before she gave birth to him.

But they’re what I get to keep. They’re what I can look at now, while he’s sleeping, so I don’t go and pick him up and disturb his rest just so I can hold him. They’re what I will be able to look at when he’s grown and gone and I can no longer glance up from the dishes or my computer or the chopping board and be overcome by the transcendent perfection of this person I created and yet can take no credit for.

So thank you, Big Sis, for not laughing. Or, at least, for not laughing at me.