Home Tomorrow

Home Tomorrow

by Mark Simpson

Texture is most important, you don’t want baby’s delicate skin scratched and scraped by some cheap horse-hair rag. Quality, that’s what matters. It’s my one little luxury – clothes shopping for my daughter. Its nearly spring, so pastel colours are a must. I follow my daily ritual of laying out clean, beautiful clothes. Her room smells lovely in the mornings, and the pale sunshine dapples and plays there as I stand still, watching.

It’s Tuesday, and I’m already behind, yet endless fatigue makes even the simple things an effort. So much to do, and I’ve not even started on the backlog of mail. Can’t face that today, there are things that must be done. I stop at the top of the stairs, frozen for a moment, gripping the rail till my knuckles turn white. A random mail drop startles me. “Damn letters! Why must they keep coming?”

Coffee doesn’t soothe like the smell promised, and I brush past forgotten tasks in the kitchen. What time is it? Mummy and baby bonding time is overdue. I bundle all I need into the pristine pushchair, and make my way out, laden heavily, as all good mothers should be. It’s a cold sun that fails to warm me, and the unforgiving buggy jars my hands on the rough, abandoned streets. I buy the daily provisions, unthinking, and haphazardly arrange them in the spare seat space.

It’s a steep climb through the fresh-cut grass, and already my eyes are red and puffy. How rash the gardener is to cut so soon the short-lived stalks. Oh how I long to walk through wide fields of tall, slender grass. Grass that had a chance to reach for the sun and be all it could be.

Before long, it is time to stop and arrange things for our time together. “Nappies!” I cry, and begin a frantic search through every pocket and compartment till I find one. I laugh at myself for the few moments of hysteria I have indulged in – it is not uncommon for new mums to be like this, I tell myself.

Kneeling in the mud and stubble grass, I lay the new garments out carefully, with fresh flowers too, singing gently the lilting melodies that all good mothers should know, till a song forms inside me and I sing once again to Stephanie:

“New clothes, my sweet baby girl,

In such a place of sorrow..

And bright yellow daffodils too,

For you’ll be home tomorrow…”