Dearest Aníbal del Sol y la Luna,
My darling son, though you are young, I want to take a moment to share with you the things I have come to understand during my time here. Because I have no understanding of when I may get the opportunity to pass along my wisdom, I feel that writing this letter will be the most efficient way for me to share my thoughts now, with you later. I don’t know when “later” will come, but the day that it does—in that hour or minute, I hope that you find these words from a lonely mother to be the most comforting of all. Your plight may likely be similar to mine, but I have a feeling that there will come a point when you cease to be by my side, and I am afraid of what that may or may not do to you.
First, you should know from whence you came. I am as you know me, and I have not changed much so you may have grown with the misconception that no one changes. But this is not true. I have no need to explain myself to you because any information that you may need to know would be contained in your experience and observations of me. Unfortunately, you shall never grow to know your father or any other parenting figure but me, so I will have to explain the others to you. I apologize in advance that I cannot give you an accurate picture of who these men were. I think I remember them correctly, but people change so fast. Your father’s name was Rodrigo Cruz. He had green eyes and beautiful, long, dark hair and he left me and I followed him. I followed him for two years while I carried you, but I never found him. I cannot say that I never saw him again, but I most certainly never found him. Of all the places I traveled, it is entirely possible that I did see Rodrigo again and didn’t know it was him. He would have changed, and I would be like a ghost to him since I had not. Perhaps in a busy street shopping we crossed paths, unbeknownst to each other. Perhaps his strong arm breezed by mine and I felt his touch and he smelled something from a distant memory that he later dismissed as an episode from a previous life. “Something in the air.” He would not recognize me because he would expect me to have changed just like he did. They say that a baby in the womb can still hear music and voices—things happening around his mother. Maybe I saw Rodrigo and maybe you heard him. Maybe he spoke the sweet words to someone else that he used to speak to me...when we were alone. And maybe you overheard those words and confused them with the prayers I said for you. Can you tell that it’s me when I talk? And if you are inside me, then can you hear the words I speak in the depths of my being, for only my own ears to hear? When you were inside me, did you read my wishes? Then you would have seen Rodrigo Cruz—in all his glory, just as I remembered him to be. Maybe you will grow to have his eyes, his hair. When I look at you now, I don’t see him. I don’t see me either. I don’t see Aníbal or Nelson or the truck driver or anyone. I just see a baby. I don’t know what people mean when they say that babies look like their parents. You don’t look like me. And you don’t look like Rodrigo. Then again, I never knew Rodrigo when he was a baby, so perhaps as a child he looked exactly as you do. Time. It always changes. Too fast.
I wish I could see you as you grow through the different stages in your life—I want a chain of pictures, like so many paper angels, to watch you mature and compare each moment with the ones before and after it. Every minute captured in a picture. Every day....or year. I have yet to learn which increment of time is the crucial stage for change. When do you turn grey? Is it from one day to the next? How fast does it take for shoulders to grow strong? A month? I don’t know if it would matter or not to pinpoint that exact speck of time when life clicks from one phase to another, but I would like to know. Everything moves at some rate—some indefinable space in the cosmos that no one seems to agree with me on. I don’t know how I could have learned so much but never really master this. This “time.” My hope for you is that you will be able to learn and understand far more than I have. Yet, I hope these words never seem like the ramblings of an old widow. Maybe you will understand time better than I do, but please don’t dismiss me—these words are important to me, and therefore I hope they matter to you.
Because I have learned so much.
I have learned the love of a husband, a soldier, a father. I wish you could know your namesake. I wish Aníbal had not grown old after I left him. I had to leave him, you see, because he didn’t understand, though I wanted him to. Those two years were the most wonderful of my life, despite it all. His power, his kindness. I hope you grow up to be as kind as this father—to open your heart as he did to me. His brother too, the soldier, your third father, Nelson. I hope you learn to share intimately with another person, to trust them enough to give your heart unabashedly. Fatherhood means so much more paternity, and if I could have these men involved in your life I would have. I would give all of time for you to understand what it means to be a good man because I cannot really show it to you. I cannot explain what it looks like and the only examples I can point to exist in a lifetime that you are too young to know. Yet, I do hope that you can learn this love, that you can find a collage of fathers to show you the way to be a man—strong, kind, secure.
I have learned the value of a foot-rub. Many cold nights I have spent with my hands enveloping your tiny feet, working the cold out of them—the cold escaping into the night as we create warmth with our touch. It always made me feel...taken care of. If your feet are the roots that keep you grounded in this world, then they are the source from which your life springs. To hold them is to hold the deepest part of someone. To warm the feet, warms the soul.
I have learned the blandness of so many crackers. I eat and cannot fill myself. “Nothing tastes.” The years between one bite and the next leave me feeling empty. No matter what I try to fit inside me, there is too much to fill. Too much “time” creating volumes of space in my heart, years upon years that should be full of experiences and pain and joy...but not enough “time” from anyone or anything else to smooth out the gaps. What can a cold quesadilla do for eight weeks of time? The hole gets larger, and I continue my search. The trucker. He helped me to look...but my knees. I didn’t want him to touch them. I haven’t touched your knees. I’ve protected you, but I’m sorry if I failed to fill you up. I’m afraid I’ve given you my hunger, and for that I apologize.
I have learned the pain of childbirth. For years I carried you and for six months I bore you—brought you into this world. I believe it made me stronger but it hurt all the while. You, slowly escaping. Me, wanting you out but afraid to let you go. I lost a piece of me that day...that month...that moment in time. You were a part of me but you left and now I have to hold you close to my heart so that you can feel its beating pulsing through your veins. We got out of sync and I tried to follow you but I couldn’t make my heart move like I had hoped it would. I don’t know if two people’s hearts can beat as one. Perhaps I was mistake as I held you inside me.
I have learned the depth of motherhood. In my womb, you were safe—no one to touch you or look down upon you, no one to tell you what time is, but not really explain it. No one to look at you like you are crazy or glaze their eyes trying to recall and understand your last moments together. I kept you safe. And I hope I can keep you safe. Away from time. With me. You should know that I have slipped once, but only once so far. I left you alone for a few seconds—out to get the paper or the mail or something. When I returned you had teeth and hair. I missed the clicks. I cried for the phases of life that you went through alone. No one should be alone like that. Do you remember? I hope you were too young. After that, I never left your side, afraid to miss any more. But I often wondered what a day’s absence would do. Could I skip your adolescence—avoid those times in life that parents always complain about? Would I really want to? If time is so precious, why does everyone seem to wish it away?
I have learned that life is much more than what you make it. Aníbal, my son, you will never really understand the world around you—and that’s ok. No one does. They lie to you and tell you that they know this universe—how things move and stay still and why—but they don’t really understand it. I read somewhere that all of science is based on a certain set of premises that we take on faith—things we don’t really even know, but we believe anyway. Faith? I always thought that meant religion, but it doesn’t. Science asks you to have faith that the world is round and gravity makes things fall and that reality is as we perceive it...when in reality, there is no way to predict the perceptivity of what is real. We cannot even define what we mean by the word “real.” Certainly we don’t understand time. So we ask questions. “It’s good to ask questions.” But when people tell you this, they really mean that it is good for you to ask questions that have been asked before. People like it when you ask them questions that they already know the answer to, but no one wants to ponder something that they don’t know. On their walls, people display the paper-proof of their intelligence and no one wants to be questioned on whether or not their money went to good use. It’s expensive paper, almost as dear to them as their egos. The ego—if it is something that you must buy, I never got one for you. I hope this is ok with you because if I had felt that you would need one, I would have spared no expense for you, starved to purchase it...but as far as I can tell, very little good comes from acquiring an ego. So even if it makes you seem different from all of the others, I hope that you never chose to obtain one.
I have learned many things over an undefined period of time...over undefined time. And I don’t know if any of these words will do you any good where you are in life when you read them. Once time takes its toll, you may be old and I may be old or maybe we haven’t aged a day. Our bodies might not change and we might not function like everyone else around us seems to. Perhaps we will continue outside of time for all time. I may look the same to you when nothing else in your life seems steady. I hope you don’t mistake me for dull. Because I have learned many things. But what is most important, is that I have learned.
From Your Love of Lifetime, Your Mother,
Celestina del Sol
