9 Months

In May 1981 I travelled from the UK to Colombia and never went back. I spent the first 18 months of my existence, from conception to that point, in the UK. My Mother's pregnancy was a dream. She said my Father treated her like a Queen. She was in labor from a Wednesday to a Sunday. I was delivered by natural birth and my Father claims I did not cry. He told me I looked around the room with serious curiosity. He nicknamed me Patagrande bc they hadn't picked a name and my feet seemed very big for my body. They thought I was gonna be a boy so they bought a lot of blue. That prompted people to call me a very cute boy which prompted them to get my ears pierced very early. My Father told me that he used to lay me on his chest for naps and would prop a book up on my bum so he could read while I slept. He was a student back then…

When my Mother left for Colombia that May, none of us knew I wouldn't see my Father again until I was 19 years old. An entire lifetime later, our fractured identities collided in a Big Bang that took 16 years to settle.

My niece, Izabelle, will be 8 months old on December 3rd, a day after my Father's 68th birthday. I spent the day with her and watched how she interacted with a new environment, new faces, new dynamics… and I wonder at my own experience.

Children experience the world in a very intense way. Their emotions are strong, primitive, and worthy of exceedingly cautious care. I know this because the first 4 years of my Earth-side life was full of intense emotion. So much so that I have vivid memories that date prior to my 2nd birthday. So much so that my body knows what it feels like to grieve the way one grieves the deceased in a way so catastrophic that I have spent the last 10 years of my life learning myself to the point of knowing my biggest life challenge is emotional regulation.

I witnessed Izabelle's reaction to the separation from her home and tribe today. She suffered for about 60 minutes. Eventually, her nervous system returned to baseline, she began to play, she was able to eat, she explored her surroundings, she took naps… and she saw her Mom again in the afternoon.

I am taking the time to reflect on my own experience and what it meant to have had such a close bond with my Father and our home disappear from one day to the next. What it did to my mind and my emotional state.

Because 9 months might not seem like a long time. But when it is the whole of your life, it is an eternity. And when it is half of your entire existence, it is so terribly young to know such pain.