Dear Daughter

 I was thirteen when my body changed. It was New Year’s Eve. As the clock moved closer to striking the time of change, my body shifted too, waxing waning like the moon. 

So, it was here. 

I had a paper round. At my time and of the month, my body would bend with the weight of the bag and the pain. This became a part of my routine, as much as the dog that snatched the newspaper angrily from the letter box at the big house where they asked me to knock instead.

My body was a mystery to me, yet on that night as the clock climbed, I didn’t mind. I didn’t know that my monthly cycle would hurt so much. I didn’t know either that sometimes in the days before, I would laugh more, I might cry more, the world more vivid. I didn’t know. 

 My thirteenth birthday was on Christmas Eve. I don’t know the exact time of my birth. My birth mother described the early hours of the morning. I wonder if I flew into the world like you did, as if impatient to be alive, to be important. 

 The thought of any kind of pain you feel catches at the membranes of my body, as though I hear you without words. You once had a urine infection. Your temperature rose and you pulled at my sleeve as if to say, ‘Listen!’ It was then that I took you to hospital, my little tot, where they told me they had to check your kidneys and that if the infection had spread, you might have died. 

You still pull at my sleeve. Your body speaks. A long time ago, I woke in the night as my breasts leaked, as my body replied to the call of a child who hadn’t formed words yet. 

When our bodies change and we begin to bleed, it as if the universe asks our question and our body replies. On the night so many years ago, I understood that. The bleeding between my legs and the grinding in my lower back never took away the certainty that the universe spoke to me and that I had my place. 

Who will be there when your time comes? I will be here, across the ocean, far from you. If your heart calls to me, know this, that mine will answer. Throughout time and mists and years, the body knows this and if your body calls me, mine will answer every time. 

I love you, Mummy