The Light's Calling

Rose

Rose's dream was to a star. She did not have a specific vision for what would make a star, but she knew that she would reach that status. Rose's passion for helping others would be that mark, showing a star in the making. Her passion for others came in many forms, but the one that helped her as it helped others was quilting. When Rose got on that sewing machine, it was as if the sewing gods shined down on her as she made a small bolt of fabric into heartwarming stories of love told through interweaving fabrics, threads, and ribbons. When she sewed, she felt as if she was sucked into a vacuum of silence. The rush of the constants in life, alarms, washer, dryer, leaky faucets, engines running, and the sound of the tv(voices, sounds, nature, artificial sounds)constantly reminded Rose that there was this life going on around her but she wanted to bring to her world, a new sound, the sound of a baby.

For many years, she tried, but it just wasn't the way it was meant to happen for her until another sound came *Ring* *Ring* "Hi, Rose, this is the CRP coordinator, and we remember you called to inquire about providing a safe home to children who have been moved out of theirs".

"Yes", Rose replied within a shiver in her voice, as she began to now feel like it could be possible for her.

It had become real for her. She was no longer separate from this part of the world: the one where kids do not have a place to call home. She knew, at that moment, that she would be diving head first into it.

The first was like all firsts in our lives. We cradle them, protect them, closely watching them, not realizing that we are holding on too tightly. We fear the worst but always look forward to the best. Our firsts are never perfect because, as with all firsts, our inexperience shines through, but so does our innocence in new territories. We mess up again and again and then right before we feel like the first time will not go as imagined, and we feel that changing anything is futile, we remember, we reflect, and we realize that we did our best, even if it's not perfect(no one can tell the difference anyway).

Rose knew that this didn't go as planned, but it went just as it needed to. When the first baby looked her in the eye once its eyes began to focus on the world a little better, and it could distinguish or do much more than eat, sleep, and poop, she knew that this is what she was meant to do.

The moment Baby June recognized Rose as her mommy, Rose's light flickered until it no longer shut off. Rose found what her light was connected to, and she wanted to make sure that she could have June to share it with until June found her own light. Baby June made Rose feel like this was the moment she waited for her entire life. Baby June smiled with all her being that her tiny little eyes filled with tears when she could finally see the angel that watched over her day and night after a hard 7 days of being in this world alone. In this world where all she could hear were machines and voices, beeps and air and beeps and air, no one felt or sounded familiar.

It was cold like the feeling of being in a desolate place and realizing that you are all you got. But, when Rose met her daughter for the very first time, Baby June knew that she would be there for her as she held her tiny wrinkled hand with which she only felt gloves or cold hands that moved the wires, cords, tubes, bandages on her or connected to her, but Rose's were always warm. And, even though Baby June could not see her, she could always tell it was her because Rose's hands were always warm and her voice was always loud, very loud, but that's okay because it gave Baby June comfort to hear mommy Rose coming through the hall, talking just slightly louder than everyone else. It didn't bother her that her mom came later than all of the other babies' moms because Baby June felt that the best things take a little longer to come, but she would also learn a harsh lesson with Rose, that happiness comes in waves, and it isn't forever. How can she appreciate the transience of all things in life, if only in their impermanence, they are much more precious?

Rose's second call from this CRP department wasn't a call she waited for; it was one she wished would never come.
"Hi, is this Mrs. Rose Carter. This is Angelica from CRP, and I would like to thank you for caring for Baby June for the past 8 months, but I am excited to tell you that we have found her a permanent home."

Rose felt a chill come over her, the kind you feel when you believe there is someone else in the room, someone that was not invited.

Silence hung in the room as a thick cloud looming in the wake of a disastrous storm.

"Hello....hello....Rose? Are you still there?", the  woman on the phone asked as she received no response from the person on the line.

"Honey, are you okay?" David asked as he went over to the catch his wife as she fell into him with all of her weight and then fell to her knees as tears streamed down her face and slipped through the creases of her lips. She opened her mouth to tell David to get the phone but all she could say in a low half breathed whisper  was "my baby...they can't take my baby girl. I told them we wanted a baby for us, for our family. That's why I signed up to all of this, but they just rip  the baby you care for and love the moment you lay eyes on them, your son or your daughter. They push reunification with parents, who do not have the child's best interest in mind. What kind of monsters do that? Take a baby from the only love they will ever know to put them in who knows where with who knows who. This is her home. This.... David, please don't let them take her." Rose continued as she point in front of her out into the space around her, the house she  and David created for each other and their children.

"Wait one second, honey, and I'll let the lady on the phone that you will call her back."

" How? How is this even possible? Who was there at the hospital for Baby June when no one, no one else was? Me, you, not anyone else. I'm the only mother she knows and the only mother I wanted for her to have.  What does that woman mean by 'she found her a home'?  This, this, this is her home."she yelled out with every bit of her strength.

She felt her heart being torn into every piece that made it up, and she cried until her heart could cry no more as she held onto her baby. Her first, her reason for being, was right in front of her, not know what heartless decision had been made about her future.

As she sat in the living room alone, she held her baby and rocked her slowly, taking in everything she could from this moment, trying to not forget it, not forget her Baby June. But, Baby June would be taken from her and possibly forget the first mother that sustained her life when she was clutching on to the threshold of life. Baby June would one day wake up, and Rose would be in her memory but not in her sight. A smell, a touch, the tone of a voice would remind her of love, but she would only briefly glimpse the nameless woman who was once her mother, the first one.

Rose knew this in her heart as tears of loss and love streamed down her face. Her soul was inconsolable and her body could handle no more. She held onto Baby June as she rocked her to sleep this one last night. As she did this, her light shined bright and then dissipated with the rising sun that marked the day Baby June would be taken from her home and forced to live in one that was not her own. She belonged with Rose, but not in this world that wanted to make the best choices but never quite attained that goal.

But, a young girl from a broken home would soon come in to bring a little bit of June back into her life. The light would shine yet again for a little girl named Alix.