In response to What I Would Tell You
I’m lying in bed with tears streaming. My beautiful, precious Willow is snoring in her sleepform mattress in her sidecar cot next to me, to a backing track of her feeding pump getting bonus milk into her as she sleeps, my opposite arm is dead because Chops is sleeping on it. I’m reading this essay by a Mum of a little girl like Willow, who at the time of writing was 7.5 years old.
When she was 8mo, I was sat in Southampton hospital waiting for an appointment to see the gastro team and a couple with a young woman with cp in a chair walked in, the young girl was perhaps 12 years old, I desperately wanted to go and talk to that Mum, she looked happy, I wanted to catch her eye, I wanted her to notice Willow and give me a knowing look, but she didn’t. I’m not sure what I wanted her to say or what I wanted to ask but I wanted to connect in some way.
I forgot all about that moment until I read this essay by Julie Keon. What I would tell you.