I’m looking at the world through different eyes now Lord.
Seeing things in a different way.
Did you ever want to sit down
and cry Lord,
For a child you had lost in the rain?
I’m looking through the world through different eyes now Lord.
Seeing the world in a different way.
This poem was written in 1980.
I was 15 the Spring my first boyfriend broke my heart. It was shortly after that when I felt death touch me for the first time. While I lay on a hospital gurney in a supply room at Kaiser hospital I felt a life that once had fluttered like a butterfly inside me, a baby who had smiled within my heart, shudder and die. It was October 30, 1979, 6 months earlier during Spring break I had gone through an early term abortion the due date for that pregnancy was October 30. This was a late term procedure – I was 20 weeks pregnant and 4 weeks shy of my 16th birthday.
I cried myself to sleep a good portion of the year 1979 and most of 1980. Parents who had been absent in affection and guidance for most of those 16 years didn’t think to seek out help for a child who was so obviously lost. The blackmailing involved to coerce the termination of two pregnancies in such a short time was an example of many things that were lacking.
On October 30, 1991, my second child, Sarah was born. Shortly before her third birthday she sat very quietly and seriously on my lap and watched the PBS showing of “Angels Among Us”. After about 40 minutes she turned her face to me and patted my cheek and said, “Tha’ wha’ I am Mommie, I you Angel”. Is she the little person I had wanted so desperately to be part of my life so many years ago? Did she hover close enough to me that when the time came she could try again, watching and protecting me while she waited?
The tears now, when they come, are fewer and farther between. I think there will always be moments when I’m back there laying on the gurney and I feel that tender soul leave my body taking with it a piece of my heart and whatever was left of my childhood innocence.
“For the life of me, I cannot believe we live and die for these sins, we were merely Freshmen.”
– The Verve Pipe