Butterfly kisses - Bob Carlisle

As you reach a certain age, more and more people start prying into your business inquiring about your plans to procreate. Especially if you have been married for a while, like I am.
We have learned to field the (properly impolite) questions by now, but let me tell you something you might not know. Choosing not to have children is something that has grown over time, it has not always been the case. When I was little, I knew that I was going to be a mom, somehow...

I grew up with an older sister, whom I love and miss very much, and we have spent many, many playdates, inside tent days, burrowing in the tall grass days and giggling under the covers nights growing up. But at a certain point this started to change. As my sister moved on to high school, her life got more complicated and she started to have a lot of interests not involving me. The posters on the wall, the endless loops of the same cd over and over again (I think that even my father knows Black or White by Michael Jackson by heart, through pure osmosis), boys (eeeeewwww), I just was in a different stage of life. I started praying for a baby sister. In my head, I would be her Iesh to my Dieke and we would live happily ever after.
I remember it like it was yesterday, that our parents sat us down in the office and told us that we were going to have a new member of the family. I knew it! My baby sister! No a moment's doubt that it was going to be a girl. The months of my mom's pregnancy of the baby, project name Ukkie, were such fun for me! My mother, who normally does not spend any time in the kitchen unless she has to, was baking and experimenting in the kitchen all the time. I remember how at a certain point Ma flew to Venezuela to have a test done to see if the baby was ok, because she was an older mom-to-be and how scary that was. She decided not to do the test and then the Gulf war started and I remember that my fear then was even worse. What if they started a nuclear war or use nerve gasses that travel across the world and hurt Ukkie??? There was this special prayer meeting at the church and I remember not being able to stop crying because I was so scared (By the way, I was 10).

And then Ukkie was born. Wowie, that was something else. She was perfection and everything I had imagined and more. I wore pink for a full month and told random strangers that I was an older sister now. Without Kwek there would not have been a Kiki.

Looking back I can't understand why my heart melted with Ukkie-now-renamed-Kwek so completely and immediately. But it did. She was my purse and I carried her around everywhere. I would rock her to sleep until my legs fell asleep and still not move in fear of waking her up. Once she fell of the bed with a mercury thermometer and scared the living daylights out of us. Another time she pushed herself off the bed and hit her head and lost consciousness and I applied first aid and got her in the car for my parents and then completely fell apart afterwards.

When 6 months later my aunt gave birth to a baby girl too, I became an expert in changing diapers dually. Good times....

When I left the house to study abroad at 17, Kwek was 6. It was not surprising that we would grow apart, but I always, always felt responsible for her. So when she had to leave the house to go abroad to study many years later, we went ahead to pave her way, changing our own life course without even knowing or thinking twice about it.

The last few years we have been through a lot. It made me realize that the extent of unconditional love is something you can’t know before the boundaries are tested. The recipient of you love does is not always aware of all the nights they kept you up worrying or praying or simply missing them. And that this is how mothers must feel. It never stops, not matter how old ‘your’ baby gets.
And now my baby sister is getting married tomorrow and we can’t be there. I saw her today and hugged her and kissed her and cried on the way home (screen is quite blurry right now too….).

There are no words to express how much I wish you well, Kwek. You and your little family deserve the best of this world. And even though I am not you mama, you are  and always will be my baby. I love you.