LSD-2-Sky-Smiles

Sky Smiles!

by Pinky Serafica

Baby ‘Sky Luna Eda’ smiles sweetly for the cam just a few hours after birth.

Earlier, there was a threat­ened abortion. And it painfully lingered.

But she held on…

Just as she chose her name, Sky gave me a choice. The skywomb fell. My aunt, also my OB, shifted the monitor so I wouldn’t see it.

Whether or not I would survive the threatened abortion was then a scientific question mark. Sky and the universe asked it differently. The only way to get me to ans­wer and commit was to make me slow down enough; and the only way for stillness of that sort was to make me go to bed long enough; and the only way to keep me there until there was no more gray reckoning left was to make me sick or scare me en­ough. They spooned me -- My dad and mom, Jee, Emps, Dong, Pizza, Wes, Azl, Mags, Dennis, Mer, Marie, Ding, Miyaw, the ‘Sanib-Dasal’ network, and many friends -- and kept me out of des­pair. Sky Luna Eda, my baby girl, chose to stay. I com­mitted to be her partner.

It is the nowness of breastfeeding and mothering that’s valuable, redeeming and memorable. I strive to make breastfeeding sacred time. All else is forgotten. This space. This time. Sky will not be two weeks old, 1 month old, 2 months again. But it is the now­ness and mothering and breastfeeding that pierce the patience and ex­haustion and sleeplessness. I reach for a book, attempt to read to while away Sky’s slow suckling, only to feel a little guilty. And yet, only when I am away a little bit – my mind at least – from the now­ness that keeps me intact, with nerves unfrayed. I have to work on that, aligning Aka-Ba-Ka (mind, body spirit in Egyptian) to appre­ciate this space-time with Sky. I disappear, I am all breast and yet I remain. I live in multiple planes of reality in lightspeed.

--Pinky Serafica is a member, SanibLakas Foundation & LightShare e-group [from an unpublished collection of vignettes, titled, Sampayan (ng Lampin)].

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