Kwynn's Song

Soleia 0.113 It is important that you don't think I write this just to sound clever or caring.  This isn't the show...the spectacle of loving you.  I really more than anything want to give you an accounting of who you were before you could remember who you were - Soleia, before Soleia knew what a 'Soleia' was. So much of what we are and what we think we are, is what is told to us about ourselves by others.  It creates this outline that we fill in with our actions and behaviours, our reactions, our fears, our hopes and our dreams.  But the outline is sometimes so restrictive that it keeps us from filling out things that others simply don't see. There is this tension between freedom and structure that exists in the universe.  When I tell you something about yourself am I imposing my understanding upon you, limiting your freedom to be what you choose?  Or am I simply informing you of something that is actually there, giving you a structure and framework ...

Soleia 0.106 I hope that you never think me heartless.  I can see how your mother is with you and I know what I must be to you.  She will be soft so I must be hard.  I must be hard so that you can be both. In your life, you will meet people and mostly be able to safely and quickly dismiss them as one or the other.  Wishy-washy people who go back on their word, dream without taking action, and consider an insult equivalent to a violation.  Boring, anal, impatient people set in their ways, conflating rudeness for confidence, volume for persuasion and proud of their pig-headedness, their stubborness, their ignorance. Learn from these people, Kwynn.  Learn from their faults.  Learn what not to do and how not to be yourself. Even in moments of solidity, liquids can form.  I like to think of myself as ice: cold and rational with respect to what must be done for you.  I've been ice since you were born - winter ice, the ice that doesn't melt ...

Soleia 0.76 "By a process of contradiction, distance in space makes things look small, and therefore free from defect. This is why a landscape looks so much better in a contracting mirror or in a camera obscura, than it is in reality. The same effect is produced by distance in time. The scenes and events of long ago, and the persons who took part in them, wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it always seems defective. And again, as regards space, small objects close to us look big, and if they are very close, we may be able to see nothing else, but when we go a little way off, they become minute and invisible. It is the same again as regards time. The little incidents and accidents of every day fill us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion, as long as they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important, so serious; but as soon as they are bo...

Soleia 0.61 It's this idea of supermassiveness.  You may not be very big in physical terms but in psychological and spirtual terms, you are the biggest thing in the universe.  Your life is this supermassive event, this supermassive object around which our lives now revolve.  With that supermassiveness comes the way that you warp the world around you, the dramatic pull that you have on those you meet.  You could call it your 'gravitational pull' - the way people are drawn to your sounds, your smiles, your little face. But as Einstein revealed, this gravitational pull and the way that you change our reality has tangible effects on both space and time.   Just taking a look around our little region of the house and your effects on our space is apparent: the room that we've made for you both in our hearts and in our environment.  A cradle, a crib.  Swings, playmats.  Bumble chairs, carseats, strollers, carriers, baby bathtubs, bottles.  S...

Soleia 0.31 We are exhausted.  You won't sleep in a crib.  That would be too easy.  If you aren't in someone's arms, you won't go under.  If you are leaving someone's arms,  you won't stay under. We went for a walk and it didn't seem to be improving our moods. We were coming home, resolved to the fact that there would be no happy ending to this little journey.  It was there, just a little ways from the house that we saw two women coming in our direction, both of them pushing strollers. Two Afro-Canadian women, women far younger than us.  In the strollers were two beautiful little girls, friends no doubt by virtue of the friendship between these two young mothers.   They asked us how we were and your mother was as she always was: honest, to a fault.  She spoke candidly about our travails and was rejuvenated by the cameraderie; the shared struggle.  The mothers told us of things that we'd seen, things that we'd seen and...

Soleia 0.4 This isn't easy.  My nerves are frayed.  Funnily enough, I'm actually past the point of laughter... Startling in a way - I didn't think I had that point.  I looked down at you just now and couldn't laugh at how awful this was.  It was just awful - with nothing else that I could take away. You cry - water running from the Sun.  It's unnatural - the Sun crying and the way that you cry.  You have that higher level.  It stops being crying.  It goes past screaming, past bawling, past wailing, to some other word that I can't think of now.  I can't think of most words now, being as tired as I am. If I heard the sound you were making and weren't looking at you, I'd think that someone was lowering you very slowly into boiling oil.  That is literally the only thing I could think of someone doing to me that might make me make that sound.  The only thing.  Not having my arm sawed off with a butter knife.  Not being ca...

Soleia 0.15 We're still giddy. Your caput is still large.  It worries your mother. I've taken the night shifts with you, seeing you through and making sure that the most important investment in and of our lives is still there for us when the dawn comes.  SIDS is, to us, a far worse acronym than HIV, or MAD.  We are literally more afraid of SIDS than we are of nuclear holocaust.  One keeps us up at night and the other doesn't. Even now you smile and while I might wonder if you even know what happiness is, I don't care what makes your lips curl.  All I know is what it does to my heart when they do. The Solstice has finally come, the longest day of the year.  But for your mother and me, the Solstice will always be June 6th - the day that our sunshine without end began. - Papa