I dont want to be a mum! I just want to get out of this house! My daughter told me, her voice echoing off the walls like she was speaking from somewhere far away.
My daughter fell pregnant when she was just fifteen. She hid it from us for what felt like centuries, as though time itself was folding in around us. My husband and I only discovered the truth when she was already five months alongby then, there was no turning back, no talk of terminating, just this odd dreamlike momentum pulling us forward.
We never learned who the father was. My daughter insisted theyd met only for three months and then drifted apart as if hed simply evaporated. She only shrugged when we pressed for details:
Maybe he was seventeen, perhaps eighteen. Or maybe nineteen shed reply, numbers floating like soap bubbles, popping before we could catch them.
Of course, my husband and I were both utterly stunnedher words fluttered around our heads like moths. We knew it would be a tremendous burden on all of us. Even so, my daughter kept insisting that she truly wanted a child, desperate to be a mother, as if she was reciting lines from a script she barely understood. I sensed that she didnt comprehend what real motherhood entailed.
Four months later, the world spun strangely on: she gave birth to a remarkable little boyrobust and hearty. She barely survived the ordeal, the birth wrung her dry, and she spent months drifting through recovery, her body more ghost than girl. I quit my job to care for both her and my grandson, wrapped in the cocoon of our red-bricked London home.
But as she regained her strength, she seemed to float away from her child. Dreamlike, she slept through the night and refused to look at her son during the day, always half elsewhere. I tried everything coaxing, pleading, explaining, even shouting, but my words evaporated like mist. One evening, she blurted out,
Youre the one who loves him, arent you? Why not just adopt him yourself? Ill be his sister, and you can be his mum. I just want to go out with my friends and dance! I want to have fun!
I wondered if she was suffering from postnatal depression, but the doctors insisted she was simply detached. She just didnt carry any love for her own child. The oddity of it all ate at me: it was as if love had skipped her, leaping directly into my arms.
After much bewildered wandering, my husband and I decided to handle things ourselves and were finally granted guardianship over our grandson. My daughter became like a shadow, slipping out late at night, returning at dawn, moving through our townhouse with barely a footprint. She cared nothing for her sonhe existed as a curious afterthought.
That was how we lived for years. We came to believe nothing would ever shift. Our grandson grew, steadily blooming into himself. Over two years, he changed: sprouted up, stumbled through his first steps, babbled until words formed, and became a shining, cheerful boy.
He overflowed with joy each time my daughter came homerushing to her for a hug, chattering on endlessly, building bridges of words. Slowly, a quiet thaw began: my daughter’s heart melted. She became a marvel of a mother, pouring every idle moment into her sons world. Shed wrap him up in hugs, plant kisses on his cheeks, and often declare,
I cant believe how happy I am to have my boy! Hes the most precious part of my life! Ill never let him go!
Now, my husband and I float in a gentle calm we never thought we’d find in our home. At last, a contentedness has settled like dew upon our family, soft and golden, somewhere between memory and dream.
