We left in a cab. You swimming in your too-big blue baby bunting, strapped in tight. Your dad and I holding hands across the hard plastic car seat, hemming you in, beaming and terrorized by your tininess. Your mewling cries, my leaking breasts, thin red scratches across your face from your own fingernails, now swaddled in cotton mitts, and that extra chromosome that unraveled all our certainties. Our well-conceived plans flying out the window, streaming behind as the time-ticker ticked. Counting on others to get us home. Not knowing the cost, but ready to pay it. To pay it all.
Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada).