"Why are your eyes watering like that?" Oh, it's nothing, just my allergies. -- BKF
[AN/PSA: Denial of emotional expression is a toxic social enforcement and needs to die]
"Mama? Are you crying?" My sensitive little darling, Xin, had found me. I couldn't tell them. Not yet.
I startled, rushing to soak up the leakage from my eyes. "It's pollen," I lied. "Got my face going funny."
Xin was four and cried when they couldn't find their favourite soft toy. Or when they were out of their favourite fruit for dessert. Or when their world was slightly out of its normal routine. Xin had been out of sorts for a month after the move to this planet. They were not prepared for that which had just landed on me. "Maintenance gotta change the filters," they decided.
Sweet darling child. So very much not used to life off a station or ship. Still adjusting to everything was a huge strain on her baby. Xin was still in that stage of life when every bad thing was the worst thing to happen in their life. "We're on planet, my lovely. They don't have air filters, planet-side."
"That's a silly way to build stuff," Xin decided. "You gotta put a complaint ticket out."
I scooped them up and hugged them tight. Kissed them until they squirmed to get down again.
"Ma-ma-a-a-a-a... no... Don't be yuck."
I put them down. "Go on and play. Mama needs to work on a huge grownup-level puzzle."
"Can I help?"
"It's a lot of reading and filling in forms. And more reading. And searching for information. It's very boring."
"And no pictures?"
"Very few ones," I said. "Nothing interesting like your books."
Xin blew a rasperry, expressing their general opinion of grownup reading. They also trotted to their room to play. Poor little sweetheart didn't want to leave the house without their emergency breather mask.
They were clearly not ready to know that my partner, Xin's Rennie, had just left us. That ze had made such announcement to me in a brief, generated text.
After I had moved everything just to stay. Ze left. After I had to leave my job for hir advancing career and promotion, ze left me to deal on my own.
My first search was for job placements for my skill set. Then for parental communities in my area. Then for what the childcare options looked like. It was a lot of searching, but I could start over.
I may have been thrown for a loop, but I have other ways to land on my feet.
And I'll cry about it later, when Xin is sound asleep and I have the time.
[Photo by Kolby Milton on Unsplash]
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