Things I wish she were here to see
I try to write for, about, to her every year around this time. I tried to write a 5 things list of what I wish she were here to see. And then I remembered, I am the mom object. I've been inviting her to see through my eyes the glory of the springtime greening. I like imagining that this way she gets to see, gets to hear, gets to experience some of what I do - and maybe, if what we know about cellular consciousness is true, and the fact that her cells formed me, and mine became a part of her* - hers/mine (and all our relations) becomes harder to distinguish. I am glad she gets to see (feel) me more whole, more myself, carrying forward from how far she carried me. I like to imagine who she would have become in a world where her own child could have a whole new understanding of themself because we've gotten more free (despite what our government would have us believe, despite what the small and fearful do). I like to imagine her in her chosen habitat, the woods, touching birches, pressing young pine needles between her fingers and inhaling, picking spring fiddleheads for a once-a-year gifted meal, calling to the birds, whispering all the unpalatable, impossible things she thinks to the beings who wouldn’t even need the words to recognize her, as wild and and one of their own. (This of course, is more of a memory than an imagining, but I do delight in the memories of her moments of rebelliousness, even those last days as she tried again to spirit herself outside; the tone and pacing of her under-the-breath mischievous retort. And I imagine her free-er, wilder than ever, fierce enough to send a call out, echoing through all our family cells (and beyond). Your whole self is waiting. We are waiting. For you.)
*These cross-generational transfers are bidirectional. As fetal cells cross the placenta into maternal tissues, a small number of maternal cells migrate into fetal tissues, where they can persist into adulthood. Genetic swaps, then, might occur several times throughout a life. Some researchers believe that people may be miniature mosaics of many of their relatives,: their older siblings, perhaps, or their[maternal grandmother, or any aunts and uncles their grandmother might have conceived before their mother was born. "It's like you carry your entire family inside of you," Francisco Úbeda de Torres, an evolutionary biologist at the Royal Holloway University of London, told me.
- Wu, K. J. (2025, June 10). The most mysterious cells in our bodies don't belong to us. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/fetal-maternal-cells-microchimerism/676996/
