Meteorites

I found them Ruth and Ella Mae
in a donated box of favoured books almost missed
in my brisk sorting.
This bulging green volume – Your Child Year by Year
stuffed with black and white photographs of somebody else’s
past.

I imagine 38 year old Ruth dreaming up this child
her eyes shut tight against the world
phosphenes painting stars across that dark internal sky.

After years of yearning the syzygy of planets finally
lined up –
her
the man
the baby girl.

Ella Mae – set down upon the earth like a meteorite
all fire and smoke
cooling into a restless girl who wouldn’t clasp her mother’s hand
to cross the street.

They’d make their own universe Ruth thinks
and writes bits of things in the green book 
supplied by the Parents Magazine in 1928.
Not everything – she practices benign neglect
tries to collapse whole years into stray comments
that capture the mood
if not the moment.

She regularly neglects to administer
the prescribed quiz to test Ella Mae’s intellect
but remembers to note her girl was first
in her 8th grade class 
and earned a citizenship award at graduation. 

The default “he” troubles her.
Her thoughts are squirrels burrowing into the walls
of the new house
where Ella Mae gets the bay window and the robin’s egg blue
walls.

In 1941 she adds a small defiant “s” to the “he”
and starts journalling for the girl she has 
rather than the boy they assume she wanted.

And as though the universe was waiting
for Ella Mae’s girlhood to be acknowledged
boys start calling four at a time and Ella Mae turns deep sea diver
of choosing.

Her mother makes careful note of her choices until Ella Mae moves
beyond this tidy orbit and the book closes
with an engagement notice.

Then time takes them – first Ruth, then Ella Mae
both meteorites who fell to the ground
and then cooled
completely.