Happy Birthday, Mom.
Even though Mamita (my abuela) is no longer with us, I honor you for passing down her incredible love to me and my daughter. 15,209 days could never be enough.
Love,
Q
The other day I learned
that if you’re a woman
you, in a sense,
were present in
your maternal grandmother’s womb.
that the egg that would
eventually host you
rested in the tiny frame
of your grandmother’s
fetus—Mom,
you didn’t even need
to know that fact
you embodied it.
There’s no knowing Mom
apart from hers,
my Mamita
so doesn’t it just make sense
that just as she carried
and nourished you,
you held me inside your womb
and inside of hers too, in a sense?
In the darkness of her belly
we swam safe
you tasted the light
before my eyes ever formed
rocked in her arms
I in yours
Love lives on like that,
it endures.
But, Mom,
this is the first year
without yours,
my Mamita.
If we count the days
we’ve had, all three of us, together
beginning in Mamita’s womb,
they are something like
15,209…
still not enough.
Love yearns like that
it seeks an undisrupted kind of union.
We’re left hoping
she’ll visit us in our dreams
where we’ll drift, grief-free
away with her to sea…
We awake capsized,
ocean-drenched eyes
sinking ships, yet get up
and choose to love like she did.
You know, love weathers like that.
Look at us making our homes
places where strangers become family.
Look at us making a home
even as we’ve lost our own in her.
Now I watch you treasure every moment
with my daughter
emulating your mother,
and like Mamita and I
my baby is very much so yours as mine,
Like my Mamita with me,
you’ve secured her undying affection.
Love multiplies like that
(grandparents get it)
and funny enough
she, in a sense, was in your womb too
and I know 15,209 days with you
won’t be enough
for her or for me,
but we’ll take today, please
watch us fill it with as much
hugs and rice and jokes
and unbecomingly loud laughs
as we can.
Love is present like that
and, in a sense, then,
so is Mamita.
