Murmur Lee Harp Sees Her Daughter

This is the strangest sensation, to be scattered asunder by a steady wind and yet feel whole—indeed, unified—all the while. It’s just me and the whirling air and the picture show that flickers here and there, sudden and bright. I am loving this: the universe flowing through me like a river, offering glimpses of a beautiful and imperfect life.

There she is, my baby!

Blossom’s blond curls tickle her face and she giggles—the sound strikes like temple chimes—and I heft her into the cloud-whipped sky. “Wheeeee!” we both say, and I fold her into my arms, lift her tiny tie-dyed T-shirt, and deliver a squeal-rousing raspberry to her belly. This is why I got married, I think as I set my baby on the sand: to experience mama joy. Blossom had to be born. She was always there, waiting for the right time, scanning my world so she’d know when to leap. I run my fingers over her head and wonder if all mothers feel this way, that destiny tapped their shoulders and whispered, Hey, here’s the one you’ve been waiting for.

Blossom reaches up and takes my hand. I gaze at her, and an absolute tidal wave of emotions—both gnarly and soft—wells inside me.

“I love you, pumpkin.” I squeeze her fingers.

Her face changes—it dances with an infusion of new light. She slips her hand from mine and toddles away, a fast little ghost crab steering through the sand. “Daddy! Daddy!”

She is about to bust—that’s how in love she is with her father. I reach into my pocket and finger the old worn stone I keep there. Erik kneels like a catcher who’s waiting for a fastball. Blossom tumbles into his arms. I wave at him, laughing, but a strange unease tugs at my backbone. Blossom pats his face, her fingers wide. I rub the stone again.

Please don’t let anything change, I pray.

The wind switches direction, and just like that, Blossom and Erik fade to black. In their sudden absence, I feel as if a confession is in order: I didn’t know who I was praying to back then and I don’t know now. The wind gathers me in, hard and tight, and spins me like a well-shot marble. I am being pressed tighter and tighter, smaller and smaller.

I am a spirit ball now, rolling through this vast blackness.