The Bagpiper

On the transition from having one daughter to two

For Camilyn

My dearest Cam, my secondborn, I’m sorry for neglecting you because you were no fun and helpless and a massive sound of me — all lamed by the unexpressed, all rueful for throwing my primary caregiver role to the sitter, who, I reasoned, is far better trained at playing the right tunes, but who was not born to love you like I love your sister.

You were the sigh of my longing when your sister was tight as a sling of nursing mothers with that sitter now yours. I couldn’t hold your gaze without piecing your sister out on your sodden face, and I’m sorry for those segments I stole to remaster the life I already have, not really seeing you are already the best features of a kind, an air unfettered by the hours you yawned.

Those nights I pretended not to hear you bellow striking hard blows in between my ears, chanting an off-key medley about the missing mother who resorted to express instead of spreading her wind freely over her offspring, all vented in the name of antibodies, all racket in a bottle, pushing the immediate bond we once had the second you bit at my flesh.

I’m sorry for those days I strapped your limbs in the backseat as I redeem my mileage to guilt with your sister’s track pressed on loop. I’m switching to your reed and brass none like the strings of her telling volumes, of places not blown, but you pitch your drones at a level so delicate I have no excuse but to pivot such that you devote this entire passage to play no one else‘s music but your own.

I don’t get your furious babbling yet, though I know it wasn’t the weather nor anything leap-related when those big eyes thundered mine, your breakneck fingers blasting my glasses into shards, as does the beaten pipes puff, as does my ventricles pit against its own dilating chasm between recurring strokes and a flatline as a newly pegged mother of two.

I am writing to resign from this post they tagged Good Mother, and I just want to be unwavering -ly yours while you’re in the thick of feather tickles and easy peek-a-boos, even as your sister adjusts to these shifting chords, even as both of your ten fingers scour for harmony, even if the score is still revising your place in my lungs.

I hope it’s not too late to claim this space to cover for all the rented albums of your youth driven out of my warmth, a hollow voice that wasn’t the reservoir you needed me to be, and right now I’m just clasping my fingers, closing holes on breaths of thanks for first steps and actual words wound out of your mouth: my firsthand muse, my only

Cam — the resolute fifteen-months-old poetry that you are, you are.

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Stacia Priscilla (@blankstace) is an Indonesian-born Chinese wife and mother of two. She lives in Jakarta with her husband and daughters. Connect with her on personal growth, faith, and motherhood on Instagram or Twitter.