Where Are You?

And how are you doing?

I haven’t written to you for a while on here.

It’s not our only exclusive communication, I know that.
Still, I feel a bit of shame that it’s been so long.

I talk to you every day, of course I do.
In the aether.
The physical is not possible, but the aether is always possible.

It’s like when you think of someone strongly and they call you. Like that. We are always in communication, a kind of connection.

When I wake up, you’re the first on my mind.
Really you’re on my mind all the time, because you are me. You’re my heart outside of my body, as I know you are your mum’s heart outside her body.

Yet, you have your own heart and mind.
Your own karma, your own life to live.

Our separation has brought me that fact decisively.
I see you Rowan.
I see you as you, not just my child, or your mum’s child.
As you.
I think that’s a place most parents never get to, so at least that is a blessing on this path of hardship, there will be others. Ones I’m sure we never expected.

Our paths haven’t converged for two years now.
I haven’t held your hand, rubbed your calves when you were agitated; when growing seemed so hard for you.
You haven’t been pressed against my chest.
We haven’t chopped tomatoes with a palette knife or stirred scrambled eggs.
Played blocks, or play-wrestled, you used to love climbing all over my shoulders.
You haven’t been balanced on my hip in that proud pigeon stance you used to hold. All puffed up and looking ahead, I could feel how you love me so in those moments, and how happy you were to be up high, by my vantage point.
I haven't settled in with you to watch ‘The Snail And The Whale’, with you nestled in-between my legs, feeling all soft, loved, and warm. Content and excited to watch the film.
I don’t even know if you still watch that.
You used to sound the whale noise when you wanted to watch it. I remember that.
I haven’t lighted a candle so we could both stare in awe at the flames. You used to make a blowing out noise, before you could speak, to let me know you wanted to do that.
I haven’t swam in the sea with you.
I haven’t watched a roaring fire with you.
Celebrated you climbing the stairs.
Or played with you in the garden; digging, planting, and playing with flowing water.
We haven’t hiked the cliffs, or the forests. Looking for animals we love, I know you felt the sensation of them too. How each animal has its own soul.
I know your mum knows that feeling as well.

I know you wanted to get closer to them my dearest boy, and it broke my heart a little when they ran off. I saw how upset you were and I understand that. I do.
It’s hard wanting to be close to a soul and not being able.

Sometimes we wish for things that we can’t have.
I am stuck in a position where I can’t see you.

For all that happened after your birth, of which I would like to say it is absolutely, and unequivocally, not your fault. I wonder if you’ll ever read this, but if you do, I wonder if you’ll know that word, unequivocal.

It means under no circumstances.
I only say that because I know it is keen for children to take on shame and blame for the difficulties around them. I know I did.

I would like you to know that none of the hardship, and especially my absence from your life, is not your fault. None of it. You are a beautiful boy, a beautiful soul, and I will love you forever and always, and beyond, when my atoms have returned to the stars.

I know why we are separated, for all the trauma that surrounded the birth, for my, and your mum’s, challenges to hold it all together.
For the lack of support we received, and for the devastation of what our relationship became; your mum and I.

Still, as adults, we have to be prepared that things might fall apart, and we have to find ways to accept and forgive when that happens. We have to be able to deal with endings without turning on each other.
It’s hard my love.
Sometimes a life-time hard.
Eventually, we will all reach that moment, before we pass to the next life.

I don’t just mean death either, I mean that there are seasons to everyone’s life.
Sometimes the next life is a next season. So different from the last number of years.
I guess as children we accept that readily, we are given that allowance. Everyone around us expects us to change and grow.
As adults not so much.
The people around us expect certain things, certain ways of being from us, and if it is not granted, that is when things get tricky.
In order to honour those seasons we all have to make hard decisions, or the decisions will make us.
Sometimes we don’t want to make those decisions for the right reasons, because we love people, and we don’t want to upset them by refusing, sometimes people are scared of the change within them, or scared of the reaction of those that they love, to that change.

I wonder where you are.
Because I don’t know where you live.
I have had to stay familiar with the feeling of a parent who yearns for their child, who is frantic and desperate to know where they are, or who they are. How your body is growing, and how your mind and heart are being shaped by the world around you.

I have to stay familiar with those feelings so they don’t rule me.
A little shadow work if you will.
At the beginning they created more than a heap of distress in me, but now I know them as old familiars. It’s odd how much you can be familiar with. Especially when there is no option of change.

There will always be a gap there for us.
I will work extra hard to know you, in that way. I will work extra hard to zoom out to a perspective where I can, but it'll be hard for us at times, I can accept that.
I wonder how long that gap will be.
God tells me to be patient but I still wonder.
It is not time, my intuition tells me, but still I yearn.

For your heartbeat.

Your loving and committed father,

Peter