Discovering the truth about one's self means the discovery of many truths, many selves. It means turning one's head and becoming another person, another age.
No longer a mother, a father, a teacher...my child's reality is veiled with a mist until the vapor settles on the water and I glimpse a startling reflection of the person I must be, the person I was five minutes ago...five years ago...or was as a child, forever on the road to realization.
For when I fell into a certain spring at four, I emerged wet, saturated with a revelation unrivaled by any Sunday-service baptism: --- I had other selves. And with this rebirth, death made into life, I knew I did not know the mother who comforted me, who coaxed me into dry clothes, who gently hushed away my fearful trembling. And as then, the words, "Mama, mama, mommy," march out of my mouth ever unanswered but by the faint, familiar, metallic taste of grief.
For now...
I await another stranger.
I await myself.
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