Waiting for Something to Arrive

Me. age 3-4.

How long have I been waiting
for something to arrive?

Eagerness for that first solitary step?
Independence from my mother's breastmilk?

Tomorrow would be better.
I simply knew.

Was he coming this time?
Separation from the family triad.
Now two.
Mom and me,
no more breastmilk.
Now toddling.
But what about Dad?

My memories are thin 
and lonely.
The heart strings may have
been cut too soon.

At first, along the journey 
of severing, I lived with my dad.
Hundreds of miles from my 
oh-so-young teenaged mom.
He, himself, in his early twenties.

What did they know about parenthood?
Or the trauma of abandonment
or no more breastmilk?
What?

In the stretch of time living
with my dad, I'm sure I was
waiting for my mom to arrive.

To reunite the bond of
safety and souls.

And she did, but the 
memories are lost.
Only a semblance of
empathy remains.

The shaken triad.

And more waiting.
But Dad would not arrive.
The weekend visits 
tapered off like music
from a passing car.
A car that forgot to stop
to let me in.

So perhaps the waiting 
grew more anxious, 
more intent on a future
painted perfectly in my mind.

Tomorrow, most certainly,
would be better.
I could control tomorrow,
couldn't I?
To shed the helplessness and
loneliness of youth for
dreams manifested.

She told me I could create
anything I wanted.

Magic. At my heart's fingertips.

Vision. Intention. Create.
Seal it all in, sacredly infused
onto the pages of my journal.

My Perfect Guy, right?
He would be the focus of 
my waiting.
Together we could create
our own triad, or more.

Even after we met 
there was more waiting.

The arrival of our wedding day.
The arrival of our first born.
Our second... and the unexpected
arrival of our twins.

But where, exactly, was the landing 
point for peace and joy?
Heartache and suffering weren't part 
of my dreams, were never focused on
for my magical manifestation rituals.

Instead, I practiced waiting for those
hardships to be over.

And then his death. Kids grown.
Love, expectation, dreams, joy,
challenges, all tangled in the 
yesterday of all that waiting.

Now, I find myself waiting for 
my grief to end and the 
​arrival of true contentedness. 

Inspired from a line in a poem by Jane Wong: "waiting for something to arrive"

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