Shiloh at 19 - A boy to a star

Many lifetimes ago, on a continent far far away on this day, I made my way through the clogged and humid streets, a melting Spider Man cake tucked up on the seat beside me…

I’m on my way home from the one bakery that makes these specialty cakes. It’s far and the traffic is crazy in the way only African streets can be. Stray goats, Police roadblocks, hawkers touting smoked fish and exercise equipment. But I had to do it. You love Spider Man. And Bob the Builder. Or maybe Bob the Builder was last year or the year before. I smile to myself imagining your beaming grin, the kind that lights your magical eyes from within when you see it. The pride in your eyes when you scan the crowd – your cousins, your friends, the kids from the compound. And then I chuckle, knowing you will be the least interested in eating a bite. My sweet sweet boy who needs no sweets. it’s your sixth birthday.  

I might have lost my patience in the busy streets. I might be silently cursing Spider Man or worried that his melting face will be unrecognizable by the time I reach home. I have no idea how much I will cherish this day. How I will physically ache for one more chance to light your birthday candles. To witness your outstanding beauty. To hear you whine or laugh or even cry. Just to be near your life force one more time.

I am oblivious to the cruel future, I am limited, human in my lack of understanding of this world. It is your last birthday on this earth.

Gramma H, Quinci, Wesley, Shiloh, Auntie Jaqui

Grampa and Shi

My precious boy

Flying planes!

Think i had more fun than him!

The Vespa girl and her cool crew

brotherly love

Shiloh the ladies man

Still the ladies man

My little ham

Shiloh and his favourite dog Bob

Kristyn and Shi

That unmatched smile!!!!!!!

Hamming it up

Mother and son

Today I cannot imagine the 19^th birthday you will never celebrate. There were no more cakes, no more parties, no bicycles or scooters. There was crushing pain. Emptiness where there had been laughter. Just void.

And now, so many lifetimes away, in a place under the stars, I celebrate only your ageless spirit. I can only walk the beaches and feel the sensory celebration of you. The roar of the ocean waves against the unyielding rocks at shore – that is your roar. The tiniest of delicate seashells that cushion my feet as I walk – these hold the whispers of your ancient soul. 

You were here with us as a child. You live forever in our memories, but you are so much more. Beyond the limits of our clumsy human form, you soar above in the shooting stars and today that is what I have to celebrate.

Shiloh Devon Nii Kpakpo Mingle January 9, 1999 – June 21, 2005

Blue Ranger blues - Happy Birthday to an angel

Darth Vader stands tall on a random corner of Duval Street, strumming his banjo with the confidence you’d expect of an inter-galactic villain. A few blocks away, Spiderman sits cross-legged on the filthy sidewalk, a classic yoga pose, with his sitar on display.

Of course. The universe is at peace. This is Key West. Stray chickens dodge traffic. Hung over stag party gangs troll the streets like zombies. It’s a random Saturday in January.

But for me there is nothing random about it. In fact, for me, it’s a day like no other. 17 years ago - I can barely believe that number as my fingers stub the keys – that many years ago on January 9^th I gave birth to my baby boy Shiloh.

After a planned Caesarean, I awoke in a sick ward in a government hospital in Accra, Ghana, West Africa. Beside me, a man groaned as his elevated swollen foot oozed. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to drive away the confusion, the terror. Why wasn’t I surrounded by other happy new mothers? Where were the cries of newborns?! Where was my baby boy?!!! The possibility washed over me, a cold sweat of terror. I was alone and my baby was not with me. Could he have… not…made..it?

An hour later, with the help of a pushy Canadian friend who’d rescued him from the incompetent nurses, I had my gorgeous boy against my breast, his heart beating with mine. His tiny body rising and falling gently with each of my calmed breaths. Apparently there were no beds left in the maternity ward. Sigh. What a scare!

Fast forward 17 years. I wake knowing my universe is not at peace. I wake with a deep dull pain. It washes over me. As I rub my eyes and look up at the white ceiling, there it is. No baby boy. No big boy either to call or visit. My worst fear has long ago come true.

I could be in Key West or St Lucia, Toronto or Trinidad. This birthday is full of terror. And resignation that an open wound will remain. It does not scab over. So I must protect it. Protect the pain as I would protect my boy. If only I could.

As the years go by, it gets deeper. Nestled in somewhere behind my heart. Somewhere that allows the sunshine still to enter. That lets me smile and know joy.

And there are memories. Memories that stay in another place. They rest like warm blankets all about my soul. If I’m chilly I only need to walk through them and wrap one around me. Bliss for a broken mama. 

But today on the 17^th anniversary of Shiloh’s birth, I choose to celebrate. A life force like that must not be mourned. A boy with the energy of the sun, the smile of a cherub and charm unmatched, THAT boy should be remembered and not swept away in sorrowful grief.

If Shiloh were here today is a game I like to play. It makes me smile. I know that my Blue Ranger is sky diving in heaven. My naughty little boy now an angel, the brightest star above us.

Shiloh would love Key West. All the action, the people, the madness, the life pulsing through this place. The messy along with the beautiful, the rough with the smooth.  He would stop me as we walked along, and stand by Spiderman on the dirty sidewalk with unabashed curiousity and wonder. He would stop and rub the back of a homeless person. 

I carry him in my heart all day today, like I do every day. I let him see it all through my eyes and in turn I see it all through his. Innocent but an old soul. Wise, wide eyed, Shiloh’s spirit soars. He guides me in his awesome way.

He has shaped who I am today, and through all the sadness I would rather to have known and loved him, than to have never held him or known him in all his glory.

Happy birthday my little boy, my omnipotent angel. May the universe hold you when you are sad and help you along your other-worldly path. And know that if I could just hold you again, for one brief moment, I would give anything and everything.

Your ever grateful mama.

My sister is practically a body builder

My sister is practically a body builder. I live chicken wing to chicken wing fix. While she holds down a high power job, two awesome kids enrolled in everything from gymnastics to hockey, a hubby AND works out at the gym like mad, I can barely figure out where each week disappears. 

While I opted for a completely off-the-wall life, taking off to volunteer in Africa years ago, getting an expat job there along the way, and retiring at 42 to live on a sailboat, my sis is sticking it out in the ‘real’ world. A world I know almost nothing of.

She likes designer bags and high heels but she’s no airhead. She might look like Pamela Anderson on a night out on the town, but at heart, she is as down to earth as they come.  And smart. Very smart.

She’s got more than her fair share of charm and gusto too - she could sell meat to a butcher. In fact, she does sell meat. Like a boss.

She has always looked up to me – the big sis, the role model. But what for I’ll never know. I’m not the highly ambitious type. I enjoy bargain hunting in Walmart and I did live for 5 years in Africa quite happily on $200 a month. AND I was a mother of a 4 year old at the time. Some say I’m crazy. Maybe they’re right. Irresponsible, wayward, a drifter. But not my little sis.

She doesn’t see my lack of self control around fresh cut French fries or 3-for-$10 t-shirts. She thinks I’m great.

While she’s pumping big iron in a gym at 6am after prepping kiddies lunches, I’m sound asleep, only hours later rubbing the sleep from my eyes and wondering which bar has the best happy hour deal today.

She juggles a mortgage and temper tantrums. I helm a catamaran around Bahamian beaches and bays. And she thinks ‘I’ do something to admire.

Letter to my little sister:

You are a wonderful woman. You are far too hard on yourself and somehow somewhere along the line you came to believe you need to be superwoman. You are doing a great job.

But I love you behind all the muscles and the beauty and the promotions and the amazing kids you are raising. I love you for you. The pudgy blond baby I used to push around our 70’s shag carpet in a car seat/speed machine. Back then I told Mom that you were MY baby, so she should get pregnant again and have another one for herself.

You were determined even back then – to a fault. Holding your breath in the supermarket until you turned blue – if you didn’t get what you wanted. Your skills at moving your life in the direction you want have improved immensely over time. But I still see those eyes squeezed shut. That spirit has not changed. You are ambitious.

You are worth looking up to.

I not only love you with all my heart, I respect you. I have no idea where those genes came from - the dedication to a goal, the motivation to succeed, the positivity you bring to it all -  they missed me completely.

I am me, so very different. And you are you. 

I wish for you everything you want in this life. I wish this with every fibre of my being. But what I wish even more than that is for you to look within and see how amazing you are. And believe that. 

You have enriched my life and made it whole. I was an only child. A lonely child. You made it both a challenge and you brought the rewards. To this day I've never laughed so hard, until I am bursting, red faced, spewing, snorting REAL LAUGHTER as I do when I'm with you.

Thanks for being my little sis, and mostly thanks for being you.

 

Mother's Day from a boat - beyond the hallmark card propaganda

It’s Mother’s Day. A day of insanity in restaurants across North America, wherein family members attempt to show gratitude for a year's mothering in one rushed, cramped meal. 

A Hallmark greeting card commercial propaganda day that reminds us of our mothers.

Mother. That bittersweet word, packed with emotion and memory and love and pain and everything in between.

Today I sit on a boat, blue waters lapping at the hulls, sunshine bathing me from all sides, but my mother is a thousand miles away. My children are even further.

Can I hug my mother with these words on a cold stark blinking computer screen? How does one reach out without arms, to say all the things hidden in the folds of the soul that can only be shared through embrace?

Mom I love you beyond the confines of the word.

I love you with chubby little hands reaching up, into your smile. You are my world.

I love you behind the self absorbed gruff façade of teen angst.

I love you as I board a plane and move away from you forever. I watch the tears pour down your sweet face as you disappear behind airport security, and it tears me up knowing how reckless I am, but you love me so much.

I love you today, all grown up, seeing you clearly, for the well rounded woman you are - scars and weaknesses and immense strengths. I admire you and I am in awe of your countless sacrifices -s o many that were unappreciated and many more that will never be known. You are the wonder of ‘mother’.

And it all comes full circle in the most heart wrenching way. As I sit here without the warm skin to touch or the bantering voices of my little boys, it aches somewhere deeper than bones, in the soul of my soul. 

As mother’s we are literally a vessel, a teacher, a counselor for our children. They grow and the follow a path we can never imagine. We will never control or keep them except within us. We have the gift of memory, the dizzyingly gentle and vulnerable smell of our babies skin, the look in those huge trusting eyes. We cherish and grasp at the ineffable bond that allows us to sleep at night even when they are so far away. Even when they have gone forever, mother or child, they are never gone to us.

Happy Mother’s Day to every mother and every child but especially my own. I love you I love you I love you.