Time, Love and an Unmarried Mother

Cleveland 1945

The air felt colder the second time around. It's impossible
of course, it was the same air and in fact it was the
same day, the same minute, the same place and the same
building. Everything was exactly the same and yet somehow
the air felt colder and more of a chill. Maybe it was me
my skin, my fingers and toes, because I'd aged of course, how
many years I do not know, but the years had taken their toll
as they have a way of doing. I barely recognised the face
in the mirror anymore, he seems so strange, not that I ever
had mind you. As long as I can remember I only found a
stranger staring back at me which sometimes gave me a shock.

Is that what this innocent baby thought as she looked
up at me from her basket? Who is this man who is this
stranger who keeps looking back at me? Why would she know
any different if I didn't see myself in her, why would
she in me? But I was no stranger, far from it.

It is an odd thing to look into your eyes and realise
that they are in fact your own, let alone the eyes
of your infant self. The odd thing to touch your hair
to smell your breath and hold your own hand. Perhaps
not from her point of view as for her I was just a strange
man, like any other. I could be a hundred different me
and she would not know the difference, but I wasn't a man of
any I was something else entirely and so was she.

She would have no idea what her life would hold.
The hardships she will have to endure, the disappoint-
ments and the sadness she will have to go through in her
journey through life. But all the wonders that she will see
sweet baby Jane. What deed you will do while on your
journey and what good we both have done in our lives.

If only she knew that one day she would stand on those...