There's nothing worse than enforced fun. The grand kayaking adventure had turned out to be an absolute disaster. The sunshine had disappeared behind thick ominous clouds, the air turning bitterly cold around us as we donned our life-jackets. Oscar had begun bellowing the moment we stepped off dry land, into the shaky, unstable contraption. I was sure he could sense his safety was no longer the secure thing he had counted on just moments before. We'd pushed on, in spite of all the signs, all the warnings, both Lucas and I pasting wide, fake grins onto our faces, pretending it was all part of some massive adventure, hollow laughs ringing in our throats, not daring to break the brittle scene with any slip from character. Meanwhile, we had continued to ignore the fact that I knew Lucas wanted to talk about my impending doom, and I resolutely did not. We'd formed some sort of unspoken agreement, a deal that we would play nice, have the time of our lives, live for the moment, even though the reality was pure shit.
Hot air ballooning, the second of our epic adventurous activities had turned out to be a similarly disastrous affair. I was fast discovering that ticking items off a bucket list wasn't nearly the cathartic, exhilarating experience I had hoped it would be. Perhaps creating memories in this artificial way was the wrong way to go about it. In the end, I knew, Lucas would remember the obscure things about our time together. The smell of my skin in the morning. The look in my eye when I had said, “I do.” The way I always finished his pudding at restaurants, or that time I had worn my new court shoes on the wet decking outside our favourite bar, and had slipped over knocking a waiter carrying a tray full of drinks flat on his back. The silly things. The first times. The arguments and the make ups. I knew he would remember these things, because they were the kind of memories that played on my mind now about him. The first time we held hands. The way he always brought me strong tea and a blueberry muffin in bed on the anniversary of my mother's death, though he never said why, or even mentioned the date. The little things that meant far more than any bucket list adventure.
Yet Oscar would have none of these memories of me, us, our life as a family. He would have no happy times to look back on, no idea of how much I had loved him. He deserved to know, and over the course of our trip I had come to a decision on what I needed to do, how I would preserve my love for him. I just hadn't had the courage to do it yet. I'd put it off, scared to face it. But now I felt a pull that I couldn't ignore. The time had come to be brave.
We were staying in a cosy little cottage on the coast of Devon, having travelled all over the West Country for almost three weeks. I was sitting at the bay window in the bedroom, scrunched up with my legs beneath me in a low chesterfield armchair, a patchwork quilt wrapped loosely around my shoulders. My feet tingled painfully and I shifted my position to let the blood flow into them, noticing that at last the sun had begun to emerge in weak rays from the horizon. Another long, empty night had passed, and though I had spent the first four or five hours in bed, cuddled up with Lucas and Oscar, I'd given up on any hope of my own slumber as the clock had ticked the hours away. Finally, and inevitably as was always the case, I had come to sit, watching the stars and listening to the quiet contented breathing of the two people I loved most in the world.
I'd been waiting, trying not to think of what I had to do, how I could face the truth of my situation, how my fear was of no consequence, because the task was too important for my discomfort to impede it. I wouldn't let my son down, I wouldn't leave him with nothing to hold on to. Now as the first streams of daylight began to filter into the warm, peaceful room, Oscar began to stir right on cue. I went to him, scooping him up out of the big bed before his fidgeting woke Lucas, and carried him through to the low beamed living room. A fire, one I had tended on and off throughout the night, was glowing softly, warming the room. Standing in front of the sofa was a tripod, my new video-camera attached to the top, fearsome in its silent expectation. Pressing the little red record button, I took a deep breath and moved to sit down on the faded blue sofa in front of it, placing Oscar on my lap. I looked down at his sweet little face and felt utter terror at what I had to do. I wanted to run. To escape my fate and bury my head in the sand forever, but Oscar deserved so much more from me, and I knew now, my path was set no matter what I did.
“Oscar,” I began, my voice wobbling as I looked up at the lens of the camera. “My darling boy. I don't think there's a child on this earth who is more wanted or loved than you are. You have been a dream, my only dream, my only wish for so long. I spent years missing you before I even knew who you were. Actually, I sometimes worried that I was building motherhood up to be this mystical unobtainable thing that would change me, change the whole world around me. I worried my expectations were too high,” I laughed, dipping my head down to kiss my son on top of his soft downy head. “I was wrong. You surpassed my expectations beyond anything I could have imagined.”
My eyes met the earnest gaze of my son and I felt a jolt of emotion so strong I thought I would break in two. How could I say goodbye when I had barely had chance to say hello? How could I face the truth that I would leave him motherless and there was nothing I could do to stop it? “I wish...” I shook my head, searching for the right words. “I wish I could see what you look like as you watch this sweetheart. How you've changed into a big boy, a teenager, a man. I wish I could be there by your side through it all my darling,” my voice cracked.
No! No. This wasn't the right way to do it. This weepy message of despair was not how I was going to leave my child. I stood up and stopped the recording. I would not leave him the farewell of a desperate, broken woman. He deserved better. I needed to show him something positive. Give him something he could hold onto when life got hard. I wiped my eyes and cleared my throat before pressing record again and sitting back down on the cushion beside Oscar. I couldn't look at him if I wanted to get the words out without crumbling. Instead I picked him up, cuddling him close to my chest, focusing once again on the lifeless lens of the camera.
“Darling. Oscar... Being your mother has been the best time of my life, and I love you more than you can ever know. I'm sorry that I won't always be here with you, so I need to tell you this now. Whoever you become, whatever you do, I will always love you. I support you to the ends of the earth, I hope you will be able to feel that, even when I'm gone. You are going to have big decisions to make in your life, there will be difficult times where you might not know which path to take. Times when you need me there to guide you, love you, support you. I'm sorry I can't do that my angel, if I could, believe me, I would do anything to change it. There is nothing I wouldn't do if it meant I could stay with you. Nothing.”
“But in the almost eight months since you arrived on this earth, I have seen who you are, and I already know you are strong, you are so sweet, you are filled with kindness and love and curiosity and joy. You are a good person and I know that will never change. Even when you make a bad choice, even when you do something you regret, it won't change who you are fundamentally. Whenever you find yourself in a challenging situation, look inside. Let your heart guide you.”