Summer

     Among the several pregnancy losses I experienced the first one hit me the hardest. Her name was to be Summer and we memorialised her with the planting of a Japanese maple tree. Deeply red, small and portable, it followed us from the house we rented to our own home in a thick wooden box. For many years it held a place on the island of our circular driveway, easily seen from the kitchen window, a view I gazed upon thousands of times. Today the planter finally gave up as the bottom of the box had rotted.  I tipped it out, took everything I could plant elsewhere and worked to spread the excess soil around. I did not remember that I had put my hospital bracelet inside a film container and a small white stone in the soil with our baby's tree. Finding it today brought me back to a moment many years ago, before our daughters were born when any and everything seemed possible and most of our lives were before us. Those things have changed but our lives do hold the promise of the daughters we now have. Their paths will no doubt have vastly different trajectories but will hopefully be long and content. Today the promise of another little life was unexpectedly rediscovered by me, sweet and rife with memories; a sunny, busy Sunday became a unique and bittersweet day, a day worth savouring....