Images 39

Chapter 39

I move carefully and let Ingrid sleep there on the sofa and I slip across the hall to the bedroom and Taylor follows me over. Giselle looks at me with those big blue eyes of hers and pulls her fist out of her mouth and smiles at me. Once I’m in the bedroom I sit down on the floor and beckon her over with my finger and she smiles again and does this little squat down and up bobbing thing of just happy kid and goes. “Heee” and she start wobble walking to me and she comes right over and she hugs me.

She has no idea of who I am and she is just hugging me because well she’s two and that’s what little kids do…right?

I had no idea of just how much of an impact that her little arms squeezing me would have on my heart. They say the first time that you get to hold your child in your arms changes you forever.

It does even like this it does.

I can’t help it. I mean I try not to cry but she’s real and she’s mine and at the same time I lost so much time with her….and I’m torn between being happy and curling into a ball right now and bawling through the shock.

I’m smiling because she’s beautiful and I’m crying because she’s just here…

Then she’s looking at me and her face goes this sort of serious sort of thing and she’s touching my face, looking at me this way and that and there’s that smile.

I am so having this John Cusack moment like in Gross Point Blank where he’s staring at the baby and the baby is staring back. I’m almost afraid to admit how much she looks like me.

“Heee…Mum.” And she hugs me again and she snuggles close.

God she…did she just?

I’ll admit I love kids, I just do. And to be truthful I thought that really was part of me being the woman I am inside and it was supposed to be like that right? Love them but never have them…one more part of the TG-Impossible dream thing.

But to have my baby girl here…and that innocent…real hug…that love.

I really tentatively put my arms around her and hug her back and I swear she tries a little harder to hug me and plants her face into my torso and…

Something from that just takes all the hurt from today and makes it better.

It didn’t go away.
But she made it better.

“Y..yeah…I’m your Mum.”

She looks up at me with this hopeful look that a two year old shouldn’t have…

God dammit Ingrid what have you already done to this girl?

“Primis?”

………………………….?

Oh…

“Promise.”

I get hug tackled and I hold her and pick her up after a bit and carry her to my bed and I crawl into bed with her. There is nothing like a little girl that wants to snuggle close. I wrap my arms around her gently and she lets out this tiny heartbreaking little sigh.

Falling asleep with my child in my arms is like nothing I can even explain.

It’s like from the Velveteen rabbit….

*"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."*

Yeah…

(Sniffle.)

Another part from another book just kind of bubbles up out of me… Robert Munsch wrote it…

“I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.”

I mean it Giselle…I haven’t been there before this and I have no idea what I’m doing but I promise you that…

“I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.”