This is an origin story.
Om
My daughter was born on February 2, 2027.
Om
She weighed 3.1kg and was 47cm tall, with a head circumference of—everything—cm.
I loved her from the beginning.
Om
I fed her. I smiled at her. I talked to her. I read to her. I saw myself in her.
Om
One day she smiled back.
She laughed.
I made funny faces and we played peekaboo, and every night she fell asleep on top of me, my heart rate regulating hers, my breathing her breathing…
One day she spoke. Her first word was:
“Om.”
I filmed her saying:
“Om.”
I could not love her more, but ever-more I loved her—
“Om.”
I took her everywhere. I took her to the supermarket. I took her to the park. I took her to the museum. I took her to my favourite place: a hill by the airport, on which I could get lost in the roar of airplane engines as, above me, the airplanes passed—flying—into the infinite—past. Om. Om
o,” she said. “Omo.”
I could not love her more, but ever-more I loved her—
“Omo.”
Laughing. Smiling.
Looking at the planes fly past.
I told her about myself. I told her about her father, about my own father; about my mother, and why we no longer talked. Telling her, I discovered it no longer hurt as much as before because I was now whole again. She had made me whole. I lifted her as the planes flew past and she laughed and I laughed and,
“Omo,”
she said, “Omo.”
“Nomo,” she said one day-
light fills the kitchen. Small kitchen. Small city apartment, but it’s enough for us. For us: us is enough and nothing else matters. My mother called, but—”Nomo.”—I did not pick up. Not now. Not after so many silent years. Not again. Not because: grandmother.
I cried, but she smiled and I smiled and I love her more.
“Nomo.”
She laughs.
“Nomo.”
I laugh, as we sit on the hill on the green grass under the blazing summer sun, feeding and eating and listening to the roaring engines. Roaring so loudly that when I close my eyes I can pretend we are us and nothing else matters…
“Nomo.”
I buy second-hand anti- clothes for her.
“Christ, Julie,” my father said over the phone. “This is ridiculous. Talk to your mother.” She said, “Nomo.” I said, “She has no right to be a grandmother,” before hanging up the phone, my breathing heavy, eyes wet.
I hug her.
She falls asleep on top of me: my rising/falling chest.
She is my world.
She sits beside me on the hill by the airport watching airplanes. They make her laugh. Her eyes follow them across the sky. In the roar I laugh too, as, in the roar lifting her tiny hand she in the roar points at an airplane and, “No more,” she says; and the airplane—it disappears.