I have never cried at an airport and I didn't think I ever would – until yesterday. I have had an awful lot of practice saying goodbye, thanks to having spent my years living in four different countries, but yesterday, for the first time ever, I was reduced to tears in the airport. After thirteen months of waking up to the happy face of my little Araliya, I found myself having to bid her a permanent sort of goodbye. She sat in her mother's arms, a dry bit of strawberry yoghurt on the tip of her nose, and had absolutely no clue my heart was breaking inside of me.
 |
I have been with Araliya since the day she was born. She is more than a niece to me – she is the living, breathing embodiment of the gorgeous miracle of life. I have seen her swollen little face, straight from the hospital delivery room; her blue eyes, from the moment they saw the world. In time, I witnessed the appearance of her four pearly white teeth, her mastering of all the actions of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and the monumental conquering of her first words – "Oh wow!" – which she said at all the right moments in grown up conversation.
These past few months, I woke up each morning to the little alarm clock, which would burst in to my room in the form of a one-year-old who found things unbearably funny in the mornings. On such occasions, I often felt the urge to tape her to the desk when she came blasting through my door with a piece of something she had meticulously picked out of the carpet and so keenly wanted me to examine at the crack of dawn. I did not particularly enjoy changing her diapers either. In fact, if I could invent one thing, it would be a machine which could clean a baby's bottom and change its diaper without having to show me the subject maptter collected therein, especially after breakfast. However, notwithstanding such things as these, when the time came to leave, I realised the profound sadness of saying goodbye to a baby.
Babies have a certain oblivion to sorrow; they don't know how hard it is to be parted from them. For a baby, it is just as sad to finish the last cookie in the jar as it is to face the calamity of an earthquake. Both demand of them the same strength of tears.
She cried none for me. But I, for the first time, cried in an airport. I wept through security checks and numerous runs through the metal detector. And all through out my seven hour flight, my eyes glazed over, at the sound of a baby's whimper. I was reminded of her at every bend.
Lucky for me, the world is shrinking fast. Travel between whole continents has now been reduced to a matter of a few hours, and communication is as simple as typing and clicking 'send.' I cannot allow myself to complain, but as I sit here, an ocean away from what became so familiar and sweet, all I can do is to count the days down till I see her again, and hope she still remembers something of me.
|
E-mail