Another Mother

I remember the early morning cuddles, where Mum would creep into my room, and lie on the edge of the bed stroking my hair. I was six, maybe seven, and I was at that precious age in a girl’s childhood where the entire world revolves around her Mother. I wanted my straight red hair to hang in the same chocolate-coloured coils that framed her soft, round face. I wanted beautiful big brown eyes that a person could get lost in if they stared for too long; not the palest blue eyes that I looked out from.

Even as an awkward teenager, I still loved waking up to the warmth of my very own guardian angel next to me, the sweet scent of coconut and vanilla permeating the air from her night cream. Sometimes she would stare at me, and I would pretend to be sleeping. She would speak in nothing more than a whisper, calling me her “little miracle”. When I was around sixteen I asked her why I was a miracle, and she told me that I came into her life at a time when she had nothing and I filled up her otherwise empty life with my baby laughter and dirty nappies. That’s all she ever told me about my infancy. But, still, she was mine, and I was hers.

I look at her now, twenty-something years older and somewhat bedraggled. Her dark curly hair looks like it hasn’t seen a comb for a day or two, and her face is entirely make-up free. She sits on the opposite side of the table, occasionally wringing her restless hands together, or brushing imaginary dust from her shapeless white t-shirt.

Prison hasn’t been kind to her and it dawns on me that this empty, barren person in front of me is who she was long ago. A desperately lonely woman, the result of a childhood of countless care homes, foster parents, and a gutful of being unwanted and rejected. I now understand that she had been abandoned by anyone that she had dared to care for, and on my birthday she had walked into the maternity unit dressed in a crisply pressed white uniform with no malice in her heart.

Of course, stealing a newborn baby was undeniably premeditated. Her sole purpose was to find the sweetest, healthiest looking infant girl, to pick her up from her hospital crib, and to exit unseen as quickly as possible. She needed to love and to be loved.

I want to reach out to her now. To stand up, put my arms around her, and tell her that I’m still here. That the journalists can write their stories proclaiming that a she-devil has been snared, and the baby that she callously stole has been returned to her rightful family. But the visitor guidelines were quite implicit in stating that there should be no prolonged contact between us. I can’t comfort her, I can’t hold her. I can only talk.

I remind her of my most cherished memories: The impromptu outings to the seaside, eating candy floss, salty chips, and running on the beach with the warm sea breeze blowing through our hair. The nights at home, snuggled up on the sofa watching bad chick flicks, the dog nestled between us begging for popcorn. The stolen lunch breaks over the last few years, where we’d meet up at a café for a quick coffee and a danish, and then we’d moan about how our penchant for baked good was ruining our waistlines. An inherited fondness for sweets, pastry, and chocolates. Or so I thought. For every physical difference between us, there was an abundance of shared personality traits, likes, dislikes; even our sense of humour was the same.

Tears form in her eyes as I’m talking, and I continue. I tell her that she’s my Mum, my best friend and that I forgive her for taking me from the life that I was intended for. I don’t know my biological mother, even though I was expected to smile and embrace her at the press shoot. The unfamiliarity of her arm draped across my shoulder, and the unnatural scent of something by Chanel, she wasn’t Mum. She isn’t Mum. She doesn’t laugh at the same things, or share the same appreciation for dogs, the outdoors, days lounging in pyjamas watching reruns of American comedies, or eating more chocolate than is humanly possible. The other Mum – the one with my red hair and blue eyes – doesn’t want a mid-twenties disaster for a daughter, she wants a cute toddler with pigtails and piano lessons. She wants a six-year-old who can recite the alphabet in five different languages. She wants the perfect teenager, who is preppy and popular. More importantly, she just doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get me. She doesn’t understand that I can’t do anything to fill that huge gap in her heart caused by the loss of the person that I might have been. Because I belong to another mother.