I was twelve when it happened. I locked the bathroom door and I sobbed, certain my mother was the last person who could help. How could she? Everyone else had a normal mother. Not me. Mine went barefoot through garden mud, sang to the roots and gossiped with worms. At school they did impressions of her and I laughed along, because it hurt less.
So when the RED thing came, I wept like the world was ending.
“Sweet dear, you are blessed with new magic!” she smiled, and that only made me cry harder. There was no magic! There was only this RED mess, the body’s most brutal betrayal!
I was inconsolable… so a few days later, my mother pressed her muddy hands to my belly, and when I looked down, the RED had folded itself into a paper red robin and drifted away.
My relief lasted but one moment, until she said the red robin would return with every Moon rebirth, as a friend, not a betrayal.
The red robin stopped coming last spring…
I miss it the way I miss her — slowly, then all at once, in the quiet moments when I'm least prepared for it.
That is when I go outside in my garden. I walk barefoot through garden mud, sing to the roots and gossip with worms.
She was never the fool. Everyone else was.