speech

Leila, you are on the cusp of speaking to me in full sentences. You reach for words and try to string them together and every day you learn how to say something new. It is shocking and amazing to now be able to ask you to do something and have you do it. "Leila close the door." "Leila give mommy a kiss?"

You can ask for "more" and say "no" (which you do, all the time). You can say the names of people you love. You can name almost all the animals and make their sounds. You're a sensitive soul Leila, you feel things deeply, and I know that the transitions between your dad's house and mine are incredibly difficult for you. I wish I knew how to make it easier for you. I wish I could explain it to you better, but you're still so little. The days your dad will pick you up from daycare I tell you that "daddy is coming to get you today," and you say, "daddeee" and smile. What you will remember from these days, these hectic early morning days of learning to talk and learning to love I am not sure. Perhaps all we really remember are the feelings behind events. The songs I sing you and the love I give to you. I hope that sticks. I hope you know I've got your back. You are never more than a whisper away from my thoughts; you are a part of me. The best part. You are my strength. My will, my drive. My ability to get up in the morning. You are what keeps me going when everything seems impossible.

Last week I was holding you, wrapped in a towel after you bath and I said, "I love you." And you said, "I ya you," and rested your head on my chest. Something inside me burst open. I don't know if you know what you were saying. How does a one year old grasp ephemeral concepts like love? It doesn't really matter, you said the words, and then you held me.

a love song for Leila, while I'm away

sometimes I miss you, the way Paul Simon must miss diamonds on the soles of his shoes.
days like today, when you're not there at the end of it. waiting, your arms outstretched to point
at trees and cars on the walk home. when there is no one to make dinner for; no reason to go home.

days like this one, I am still with you. my love goes with you, wherever you are, it hovers nearby
an invisible bird, perched, waiting to pick you up if you fall. to clean the dirt from scraped knees and hold
your tiny hand.

there is no line between us child, I am yours and you are mine. this is a song for while I'm away. I will keep the peaches in the fridge for you. I will seal the cherios so they don't go stale. I will buy you a new rubber boot like the one you lost. I will love, even while I'm away.

for my father on his 70th birthday

Congratulations Dad, you made it. I am so proud of you. I think a child's idea of their parent's life is mostly a mythology of stories and hearsay. I imagine you, stoned, listening to Jimmy Hendrix in Victoria at my age, building your first house on Mayne Island a few years later, living in New Jersey as a teenager terrified your new friends were going to steal a car, being followed by the police in Franco's Spain for picking up a Basque hitch-hiker, crying when I was born because I wasn't breathing, these are the stories of yours I've woven together to create an impression of the you that was before me. I know your life has had it's share of struggles. I was there for at least some of them, which is why it makes me so happy to see you here, at this point in your life with a sense of calm; with a sense of contentment.

Thank you for always been there for me and for continuing to be there. Thank you for moving all my things back and forth and back and forth across Vancouver more times than I care to count. Thank you for always having a bed for me to sleep in, no matter where you were. Thank you for buying me groceries when my fridge was empty. Thank you for paying my phone bill when I couldn't. Thank you for telling that asshole that you'd smash his head through a wall if he ever came near me again when I was seventeen. For the record, he never did. Thank you for driving me to school. Thank you for picking me up. Thank you for watching movies with me even when you were sad. Thank you for making the best popcorn. Thank you for helping me run away when I was four. Thank you for rubbing my back and making me hot lemonaid when I was sick. Thank you for driving me to my high school graduation because we both agreed taking a limo was dumb. Thank you for supporting me no matter what decide to do with my life. Thank you for believing in my strength and integrity. Thank you for loving my child and being a wonderful, caring grandfather.

I could go on, dad, the list of things I'm grateful to you for is long and varied, but I'll leave it at that. I am to lucky to have a father whose advice I value and can trust. I think it's taken a while for me to be able to ask, but now that I can, it is a resource I treasure and rely on.

Happy birthday dad, I am so happy I came to live at your house.

Love,

Jocelyn Elizabeth Coburn

of beginings and endings.

Last week, Leila started daycare. We went over on Tuesday for an hour so she could get used to the kids and the place, and she was fine. She played with the dogs and with the two little boys who go there as well. They're five and two. And when I came to pick her up she cried. She was having fun and didn't want to go.

I dropped her off the next morning for real, for the whole day. And again she was fine, she didn't cry when I left and I stayed, listening against the front door for a good ten minutes just to be sure. It was a hard day for me. She's seventeen months old. Not really a baby anymore, just a sweet little toddler who waves at everyone as she walks down the street. But still, so little in some ways. I want to be able to be with her all the time, but I enjoy being my own person again too.

It was so hard to walk away from her, to know that those long, endless days of each other had finally reached an end. And I'm glad we had seventeen months together. They went on for so long, and were gone so quickly.

no mother is an island.

When I was growing up everyone told me I was going to be special, that I was going to be someone. I felt I was destined for greatness, for somethingness. I wanted to be prime minister or a movie star, or later, the next Che Guevara. After Leila was born and I turned 25, I went through the painful process of realizing that I was just a person, like everyone else. No better or worse, and not destined for greatness. And that even if I was, that greatness would be have be fought for.

If I can tell Leila anything as she grows up, it's that she's good enough. That it is enough to simply love your friends and family. To work hard and be responsible. That getting up in the morning and putting one foot in front of the other is all that you need to do. There is still uncertainty in my life. I live in a one bedroom basement with my daughter and I don't really make enough money to make ends meet, but that's ok. I'm working towards something greater. I'm working towards being a good mother, towards being content . I am blessed to have friends and family who are willing and able to help me. Even if that just means bringing me a bottle of red wine at 10pm and sitting there for an hour and listening to what I have to say.

I've always had this yearning. This just out of reach desire for something that I could never identify. Whatever I had wasn't good enough, it had to be something more, something greater. Maybe I'm just getting older. Or maybe it's just that it's ok not to be special. Perhaps it is because I am the center of Leila's universe, I am her great love right now and so being all things to one person has allowed me to just be.

After Tom and I first split up, I wanted to run away, I wanted to move to Iceland or Nelson or anywhere far far away from the drama and sadness and the people who wouldn't talk to me anymore. But today we went to the Library and stopped off to pick up a new bottle at the kids store by our house. The woman who works there knows Leila by name and was happy to let her run around and play with her favourite stuffed bear and some hangers. Then we went and got coffee and the people there also know us. I paid them the fifty cents I owed them from last time when their debit machine was down and I didn't have enough cash. Leila ran around and showed the ladies who work in the kitchen her new bear. These are the people on the peripheries of her life who have known her since she was just this crying, mewling blob attached to me and now, she's sweet and playful and waves at everyone, and it's ok. It's ok to be stuck in this rainy city for the rest of the foreseeable future. There are worse places. And yes, there are people who won't even say hello to me anymore, but there are also people here who go out of their way to show me kindness and consideration and who have offered me friendship when I needed it most.

Everything is going to be alright.

I keep looking forward and then back again, shoulder-checking in my imaginary rear-view mirror. It's almost impossible to see right now. It's just a blur of lines on the highway. And I'm fighting just to stay awake.


Today, I was crying sitting on the floor of Leila's bedroom and she crawled over to me, pulled herself up and wrapped her arms around my neck and put her head on my shoulder and didn't let go for a long time.

Is that a metaphor? For what? For the impossibility of guilt, of engineering without numbers. I'm angry, but that doesn't make me wrong, it doesn't make me right either. I'm not looking for sympathy, a one way mirror turned inwards showing only the accused.

I just want to pick up my child and go. We'll live on the edge of forever, and you can come visit, but there won't be any phones.

Your first Birthday.

Dear Leila,

Yesterday you turned one. I spent the whole day thinking about what I was doing exactly a year before. Counting down the minutes until 10pm. The exact time you were born. The tenth hour of the tenth day of the second month of the year 2010. You've turned into such a magical little person Leila, I am so happy you are my daughter.

Your dad and I took you out for pasta last night. It's your favourite food. You sat there slurping up noodles with an air of contentment on your face. Everyone kept commenting on what a happy baby you are. You charmed an old couple and a couple with a sleeping six month old,and every server in the place.

This has been a hard year in a lot of ways Leila. Your dad and I are no longer together. We just aren't good that way. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to take you out for dinner every year on your birthday. That doesn't mean we're not going to go to every single silly school thing you ever do. Together. Because we're your parents, and we love you. Because your dad let me listen to the same two Neil Young albums over and over and over again for twenty hours while I was in labour (I think he slipped Paul Simon in there once). Because you're the best thing both of us has ever done.

I was sacred of you at first. Scared of having a daughter, of raising a woman. But the second night you were alive I was lying in bed after your uncle Chris and auntie Chelso had gone home, and you lifted your head up off my chest and looked at me with these hilarious crossed eyes and my heart broke and melted into a thousand pieces. And I still haven't found all of them. I'm still picking them up every time you do something new and sweet. Every time you play peek-a-boo with me. Every time you smile and curl up in my lap with a bottle. Every time you say, "ma ma ma ma".

Love you kiddo.

Ma ma ma ma

Day One.

(Yes, that's an icepack I'm holding on my boob.)