'What a Difference Two Years, Six Months and 15 Days Makes' by Madeleine Armstrong

The first time I saw you, you were a screaming, red-faced mess. I didn’t want anything to do with you.  Everyone talked about love at first sight – the great love, the best love – but I felt nothing.

The next six months passed in a fog. By the time I began to emerge into a new, half-lit world, you were sitting, almost crawling. Sunshine spilled out when you smiled, or so everybody said. I waited in vain for that pull on my heart, the one I’d heard all about.

Your first word was “Daddy”, which wasn’t surprising. As more colours began to seep into my life, I yearned to join your little club of two, but I didn’t have the password. I’d missed the induction and I couldn’t do anything right, so I did nothing at all.

Sleep training tears failed to move me. Your first steps raised merely a shrug. Every day I trudged through a long, dank tunnel, and every night I dreamt of clawing my way through clods of wet earth.

I don’t know when things started to change. It happened so gradually I didn’t notice until one day I
looked at you and felt soft instead of hard.

After that, when you clung to me I clung back, a drowning woman who’d finally found land.

Early this morning you burrowed into my bed, and I was almost blinded by the light shining from your eyes. I tickled you, and your laugh was a chisel cracking my frozen heart wide open.

“Again, Mummy. Again.”

Now I’ll never stop.