Moments like this

Blurry, the park across the street melts in my view and slips down in huge heavy tears onto my t-shirt. Five minutes before, I was posing for photos, thumbs up, with my boy. Our last breakfast at a cheesy local diner, I sipped a giant diet Coke and looked around at what would be his new neighborhood. I was bursting with joy and pride. I poked and tickled him and felt the vicariousness of his new exciting life.



Soft, now my knees like marshmallows, the sidewalk so hard below me, I know I will drop, crashing like the 23 story building looming behind me. I sway in the earthquake of emotion.

Strong, the bond as he holds me, his mom, towering over my weakness. Child becomes parent, small becomes big, life shifts irrevocably. I give in to the abyss of sadness that bubbles up. I’m really losing my baby.

Common, this rituals plays itself out in dorm rooms and concrete school hallways across the continent today. But mine is different, I convince myself, mine is special, mine is my whole life that has led up to this moment! No one can possibly understand. No mother has felt this crushing pride of loss.

Buried, deep in the smell of his cotton t-shirt, I cannot face the world or the truth. I have grown up with this man, this boy, this child of mine.

Floating above myself now, I see us in the airport in Ghana, 1998. My little guy and I, after a year of volunteering, are headed home to Canada for Christmas. He is 6 years old. We are so excited and anxious to get home to the family, it’s palpable. Only, as we stand at the immigration desk, there is hesitation and the officer is upset. Something is wrong. He calls a superior and ushers us aside. My boy looks up at me with those huge innocent eyes. He whispers,

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

I shrug and squeeze his hand as they lead us into a small windowless room. We have apparently overstayed our visa and there is a massive fine to pay. We are in trouble. I don’t have the money, I am at a loss as to how this happened, as our passports are held with the NGO I am working for. We are not going to make our plane. As the minutes tick by and we sit alone and silent in the pitiful room, my heart sinks. Tears stream down my face. My boy jumps up from the chair and leaps forward. He touches my cheeks gently, wiping my tears

“Mom, don’t cry. Everything is going to be ok. It will work out. We’ll be ok. Ok?”

And it was. I squeezed him so close. My heart nearly burst.
Something was arranged and we made our plane, running, hand in hand down the runway, out of breath, we boarded the plane. Everyone was annoyed at the delay. We looked at each other with a knowing… it is the bond. We’d been through another of life’s experiences together.

Spinning, I’m jolted back to now - the world around us circles, and the moment threatens to pass. Time taps my shoulder, we will have to leave. My tears will have to be dammed.

He pulls away,

“C’mon Mom, you’re gonna make me cry.”

Which only make my tears come harder. And I’ve done it. He breaks. His strong face, cracks and our bond is exposed. Emotion all over his face. It’s sealed forever.



Our song plays in my head, the guitar he strums to me in the kitchen on Saturday afternoons back home, Bon Iver:

“I am my mother's only one,

It's enough…

I wear my garment so it shows.

Now you know.

Only love is all maroon,

Gluey feathers on a flume

Sky is womb and she's the moon.

I am my mother on the wall, with us all

I move in water, shore to shore;

Nothing's more.

Only love is all maroon

Gluey feathers on a flume

Sky is womb and she's the moon…

Gazing, incredulous, from behind he grows smaller as he skips away into the huge building that eats him up. The car carries me limp, further and further way. In the distance, the song still serenades me. My boy has grown up and the world has him now.

Ode to the grown up boy - on leaving for University

I’m pressing my head up against your warm chest, breathing you in for those last ticking seconds.

Your sturdy arms encircle me so briefly but so tightly. There is action around us, the lights of cars and cameras, swirl around. The car horns are a dull – only barely piercing my consciousness. The suitcases and carts and people are all petty distractions, the reality around us is nothing. I am flooded with the emotion that is everything. That is my entire heart, my soul - all escape in a hot mess of tears, and my last futile attempts to hold my baby close.

Just minutes ago, we were singing along to the songs that you brought into my life, that will forever connect us through time. No One is Ever Gonna Love You More than I Do… I sang so loudly. I sang those words like an anthem. Like a Band of Horses, they were my ode to you.



We didn’t speak on that last drive through the city, on the way to this moment at the airport, where you have grown up in an instant and now you are gone.

I close my eyes and breathe you in; you, the tiny warm body against mine, just hours after your birth. I am transported for just a second. I am only twenty three. Clueless. A kid myself, but so desperate to be the mom you deserve. I pat the warm smooth fluff of your newborn hair and hold your miracle earlobe in my fingers. I weep.

I am at once elated and terrified. How will I raise you up? What will I give you? What will it take? I am only comforted that the love I have is everything. It encompasses me and it is a shield around you.

And now, as you tower above me, eighteen years have vanished behind us. There is no looking back. You are a man. Have I done the right things? Has the love been enough? Will it shield you now?

You have become so much more than that twenty three year old could imagine. We grew up together, you and me, outside the box. On the edge. Sometimes I held you close to protect you, and at times it was you who held me. Like the middle name I chose for you in those first few days of life, you are, and you have always been ‘Mompati – my companion’. I took you far far away from home. Together we crossed continents and navigated cultures. We have found love and opportunity and profound sadness. We have found joy.

And somewhere in there, you grew up. My quiet, sensitive boy, you became a shining musician and a stellar speaker. You taught yourself the things I couldn’t, and you didn’t hold my weaknesses against me. You see me, the flawed, the fragile... The girl who raised you up with the best of intentions.

And I know today that somehow, the love I had was strong enough. You in turn are stronger. The world awaits you, and it has a great surprise coming.

Please never be afraid to shine or share yourself. You are my gift to the world and I am proud to send you out there. Send you, guitar in tow, with your pile of suitcases, back across the continents, as you head down the footpath at the departures hall. And as you turn to wave goodbye, though my eyes are blurred with tears, I can see that spark, and it calms my worried mother-heart.

Go well Mompati. I love you more than these silly words can say.

Highschool Graduation offers more than a Diploma Paper in Ghana

I am nostalgic and emotional and basically choked up. A great song will bring me to tears today. And yesterday. And the day before.

This weekend was Graduation.

Not mine – in fact I didn’t even attend my own, way back in the 80’s from my ghetto fabulous highschool. There just wasn’t that feeling of closeness as a whole class. There were cliques and segments, and like the street gangs of L.A. we moved through the halls of the windowless day prison, carefully eyeing the enemy. The uncool, the rockers, the ‘Enriched Program’ brainiac geeks, the Punjabis with the knives in their socks. There were the mysterious smokers who hung out at the back of the school, all pencil thin in jean jackets and Farah Fawcett hair – both the guys and the girls. There were the unwritten rules of segregation in the cafeteria and the danger of being in the wrong locker bay at the wrong time. It was a rough and tough school and no one really shed a tear at leaving.

On the last day of classes we all walked down the tree lined suburban side streets to the ‘right’ or the ‘wrong ‘ side of the main road – the classist line that divided the properties and caused further divergence among the students. We never looked back. We were grateful it was over and none of us had a united future, or common goals to look forward to. We passed the grade and did our time and it was over.

This scenario could not be further from the reality of the kids we watched through their Graduation ceremonies this weekend. My tears were brought on firstly by the reality that I’ll be losing a surrogate son – surrendering an amazing child to adulthood and the big world.

But what struck me during the numerous events arranged around the Graduation, was the amazing comraderie and sense of purpose among a class of 50. All alive and vibrant and determined. All of them convinced they will be great. None of them weighed down by the soul sucking weight of reality. None of them obsessed about themselves in that negative, self loathing way that is exhibited in the attitude of so many teenagers in the west today. The class has been together like a force, a swarm, for years. The friendships developed will span their lifetimes and have etched memories into each other forever.

All of these kids are forced upon each other, all taken from the comfort zones of their own cultures and dumped into a mixing pot called an International School, while their fathers do the daily grind with infinite frustrations and their mothers try to find women’s groups for tea and oversee the servants and try not to lose their grip on reality.

They come from everywhere – Denmark, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Korea, America, Australia, South Africa ... the world.

Still, what comes out of this experiment in education abroad is an amazing self esteem and sense of purpose the children gain. They are privileged but not spoiled, they travel the world and they are responsible. They are tolerant and open minded and they see the world far beyond country borders. They become leaders from within.
So at the graduation ceremony there are hundreds of photos and speeches and hugs and tears and the sentiment is real and the kids are all headed somewhere with purpose. But will definitely miss where they’ve been.

And the parties afterwards are shared with parents and families and everyone has fun. No one is too cool to dance with their mother, too bored to talk to their uncle, joke with their teachers, enjoy the love that surrounds them.

And the songs that serenaded the kids as they threw up their caps, and at the parties later will hold memories for all of us, and remind us that it is possible to have a positive outlook and have pride in the generation that we are raising. And years down the road I will undoubtedly be driving along and hear the song that pulsated, “My dream is to fly over the rainbow so high”, and I will see in my memory’s eye, the crowded dancefloor and the jumping bodies, all excited and hopeful and alive, and I will get all choked up and nostalgic and remember this graduation as if it were my own.