Fading Crests.

“Mom, can you please pick a different shirt for tomorrow?”

The whispered tremor in her voice cuts through me like a cold scream. I cannot see her in the darkness but in my mind’s eye I can see the tears cutting silent paths down her warm, rosy cheeks until they fall like raw diamonds into the tiny hands she clenches.

I know her sadness – I do not need her to say the reason. I do not want to hear her say the reason. To hear the words that give shape to her tears.

When she walked out, draped in the faded black t-shirt that hung over protectively over the tiny leotard just as the faded crest once hung protectively in life, she seemed smaller somehow. And my heart stopped to know that I had not realized that her simple request would uncover the pain hiding quietly beneath the surface. In my hunger to see the smile in her eyes, I had thought only of the request and not the consequence.

A simple shirt, no longer simple.

The silver Phoenix is long faded, the year beneath an inconsequential reminder of how much has come to pass. Too large for my tiny frame, it hid the body I did not believe in until it draped the belly of my future. The Phoenix rested on my heart for years, a simple crest fading as time passed and my life grew full. For more than a year his clothes remained where he left them, until one quiet morning my fingers ran along the dusty rows of crested t-shirts.

A Phoenix for each year.

But it was the faded Phoenix that I could not let go, its silver wings a reminder that held so many memories. For so long it had been my constant companion, a symbol of my husband’s oath to protect and serve the city we had both come to, separately, to start anew. In losing him I had lost its comfort and the sense of belonging that its wings had delivered.

Slipping it on, I sank beneath the soft weight of the faded crest, the memories woven into the threads a warm embrace. And when the tears would no longer come I realized that the fiery Phoenix would always be mine and that I would rise from the ashes and be born again, a woman shaped by everything that had come before and everything yet to pass.

She does not yet feel the warmth of the Phoenix, only the coldness left when its wings are no longer there. But I see the fire inside and I watch as she spreads her wings fiercely, demanding that life repay its debt.

And I see that the Phoenix once lost was always in my heart.