Duty of Care

Both my children fall asleep on me tonight. The baby at  the breast, the older one on my leg, outstretched. He’s using my thigh as a pillow. It pains me that I can’t hold him as he goes to sleep, the way I did for his whole life until the baby arrived. These days he finds comfort wherever he can.

He rests his hand on my thigh next to his cheek and I stroke his forehead, the sweaty hair at his temple. This gesture makes a mother of me. In it are the hands of every mother who has ever stroked her child’s forehead, swept damp hair from their brow. My other arm cradles the baby. I watch the shadows on the wall.

We live under a flight path. Planes roar above us into the night, and then stop. I notice them differently now. I notice the silence between other sounds.

I notice this scene deliberately. The weight of my children’s bodies on mine grounds me in the present moment. I hear the washing machine, a neighbour’s air-conditioning unit. Eucalyptus leaves in the wind — a false ocean. Another plane. Children’s breath. Night sounds.

The children shift, my body adapts. The streetlight through the young eucalyptus bathes our bodies in aquarium light. A woman walks past the bedroom window. The wind is picking up, and she is singing. Her voice is high and clear. At first it sounds like a hymn, but as she gets closer I make it out. Oh my darling, Clementine. Huckleberry Hound.

In the morning, I’ll remember it’s been a year since our wedding. Far away from friends and family, in navy blue and bottle green. Shocked by desert winds.