My earliest memories comprise of me sitting with my dolls, playing for hours on end dressing and bathing them while I hum.
I was their mama, they were my world.
Growing up without one, I watched the other mothers at the park in wonder.... such gentle beauty. Their smiles kind and patient, their skin soft and comforting. Well I imagine it was, I could only fantasise and in reality all I ever knew was my fathers hard calloused hands, heavily weathered and always rushed.
Henry Steele, the hardest working single father I knew. My Papa, god rest his weary soul.
Once a month after a fourteen hour shift he would come home smelling of diesel fuel and tobacco, a little whiskey and peanuts because pay day meant he could afford a drink with the guys. But always he would wake me up with a new doll to add to my collection. Once a month in the blinding light of my bedside lamp I would squint into his rough grease blackened face and see him smile, they were inexpensive dolls but he always thought he was spoiling me and it never mattered if they were the latest must have toy. I loved them as I would my own child.
As I held them I knew, with the naivety of youth I knew without a doubt.
When I grow up I'll be a mother, I'll be the beautiful woman in the park with a long dress covered in sunflowers and a pretty smile laughing at my daughter as she plays. I will be beautiful and life would be perfect, everything will be perfect.
Flash back to reality and nothing could be less perfect than the situation in which I find myself, with a disquieting sense of anticipation I stare at the blinking cursor on the screen in front of me. My shaking fingers pull my robe tighter and before I backspace the entire thing I click the little arrow over the button to post and it's done.
My personal ad is live.
"Well Veronica, you did it. I cannot fathom what type of man would actually reply to this farce but it's out there for the world to see, may my father and god himself forgive me. I'm going to buy me a baby daddy" I laugh at myself and the ridiculousness of it all then swallow down the last remains of the bottle of wine that assured me this was a good idea.
The sound of my voice in my barren apartment echoes back to mock me, the coldness of the unpacked space is foreign, unfamiliar and new.
A fresh start, new job, new city.... new me.
The naivety of youth never thought about the fact that my maternal ambitions would depend on a man willing to do his part.
YOU ARE READING
The magnificence of you
ChickLitWhat would you do to have something you've always wanted? For Veronica Steele the answer is easy, anything. Long despised and labelled a freak she leaves the only home she's ever known to find the life her father wanted for her, the inheritance he l...
