Where Love Divides and Multiplies

 

Where Love Divides and Multiplies

(poem version) - Parent & Child Dance ? second title choice

My life

Some families split

and the adults circle the child

like a ring of roses,

quietly counting

who is doing enough,

who has done enough,

who is there enough.

But the child —

the child just stands in the middle,

open armed,

receiving.

Growing up, I never knew

that some children divided their love

between houses,

between doorways,

between sets of rules.

My own childhood was a different era,

a different kind of divorce —

no shared love,

no shared care,

just me holding brothers,

and holding my mother’s worries

like a second skin, sister not daughter.

Not trusting the men that passed through

until one sort me out,  he gained my trust.

he came to me by then i was to burnt 

to stung by 9 men served no purpose

he befriend became my carer / parent.

So I learned the split parent world

later,

through the generation after me —

my blended family,

my children’s blended family —

the choreography of

two homes,

two wardrobes,

two rhythms,

and a circle of love

that somehow grew wider

instead of thinner.

At weddings, at parties,

you can see the dance:

who stands where,

who belongs to who,

who is who

when.

But children don’t cross reference.

They don’t compare.

They don’t care.

They just know

who loves them.

It’s the adults who wobble

on the tightrope of

being enough

and not enough.

Bonus parents, step parents,

the ones who arrive later —

they carry their own weight of

what will people think,

pouring everything in,

wishing biology had chosen them.

And the bonus children

inherit more than genes —

they inherit knowledge,

culture,

touch,

language,

ways of being

that multiply

instead of divide.

Two houses,

four grandparents,

six parents,

different rules,

different kitchens,

different bedtimes —

and the children skip through it all,

drumming their own beat

through the whirlwind.

And the adults —

the ones who grew up without joy,

without words,

without softness —

they fix,

re fix,

try again,

do better,

be better,

learn better.

Generational repair

in motion.

Footnote

Your mother’s trauma created chaos. Her choices exposed you to things no child should have had to navigate. Your biological father’s rejection carved its own wound. And yet — in the middle of all that — there was Mr V. A thread of care woven through a fabric that was otherwise frayed.