Seventeen Years

“Higher, higher,” he screeches. He knows so few words, but this is one he knows well. We are at the park, and my son is on the swings, begging me for a bigger thrill.

“Is this all life is,” I find myself asking, not for the first time, but for the first time that day. I had woken up happy this morning, with my baby's face close to mine, perfect, long, curled, dark eyelashes framing perfect, innocent, wide, blue, baby eyes, inches from my own.

“Goo moo-in, Maa.” Then he smiled his heart-breaking smile and kissed my cheek softly. These are the moments I savour. But now, by ten thirty in the morning, I am frustrated and grumpy. It is cold in the park. The trees are bare, and there are thin wafers of ice at the edges of puddles. We are alone. Most mothers go to the bigger playgrounds, but I prefer this small, forgotten play-park on the edge of town. This is where I come with my seventeen-year-old baby. Nobody understands us anywhere else. Only here are we free from pity and scorn.

“Higher, higher, push, push,” shouts my baby with unbridled glee. I wish I had his joy.