Today we're excited to share the next piece from Dispatches from New Motherhood. In her incredibly moving poem YOUR FIRST VISITOR, Tamsin Phillips writes of the meeting between her newborn son and her terminally ill mum.
'Writing this piece was challenging', says Tamsin, 'but important to me as there were times when I thought Mum might not meet her grandchild, and I am so thankful that she did.' Tamsin's poem brims with the emotion of this encounter, and is all the more affecting for its restraint.
On finding time to write, Tamsin says, 'it has taken a while for me to realise that it's OK to take time out for myself. The Mothership Writers project has felt like a fortnightly treat; I started packing a notebook in the nappy bag and squeezing in time to write.'
Here's to notebooks in nappy bags. And here's Tamsin's beautiful poem.
***
YOUR FIRST VISITOR
Tamsin Phillips
Your dad set off across the hospital grounds, permission granted
to deliver your first visitor in a porter's wheelchair.
Your gran, dressed in a nightie and navy dressing gown,
her wrist, like yours, adorned with a name band:
dates of birth 71 years apart.
Her body, frail and jaundiced,
is kept warm, like yours, with a hospital blanket.
Her eyes, brown like mine, focus on your hours-old face
searching for family likenesses.
Your eyes are blue for now.
She may never see their true colour.
Her arms, weak but tender, embrace you with ease.
Your arms, full of energy, wave restlessly and without purpose.
Her hand, bruised by a failed cannula, experienced in comforting,
seeks out your hand to reassure, so happy to meet you at last.
Her humour,
like mine, checking for the Martin-family outsized big toe.
Her heart,
like mine, exploding with love.
Her life,
like yours, fragile and precious.
Her hopes, like mine, for more time:
to watch you grow
to buy you books and read them with you
to cherish you
to finish the blue knitted blanket.
***
Your First Visitor by Tamsin Phillips appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.