This short chapter from my second memoir, A Practice of Loss: Memoir of an Abandoning Mother, tells of the separation from my daughters. Their father had forced me to agree to leave them with him and return to my mother in Sydney. He threatened to kill them, kill me and kill himself if I tried to take them from him. They were aged two and a quarter, five and seven. The photo of them below was taken a few months later when they were living in America.
At the airport, my girls and I sit huddled together. Penelope is curled up on my lap. Sophia is quiet and withdrawn, leaning her head on my arm.
‘But Mummy,’ Caitlin sobs, clinging to me tightly, ‘can’t I come with you?’
Sophia burrows her head into the space between my arm and my breast. Penelope wriggles and nestles in closer.
‘Darling, I wish you could. But Nanna is ill, and I need to look after her for a while. I’d take you all with me if I could. But it’s only for a short while, and you can come down in the school holidays.’ I have to believe this myself.
Robert paces up and down a few feet away, chain-smoking, watching the clock.
We sit without words, just the sound of Caitlin’s sobs and Penelope’s snuffles and Sophia’s sighs.
A voice announces my flight for Sydney is boarding. I hug each child wordlessly, mutter goodbye to Robert, and walk towards the departure gate. I turn before I start the long walk across the tarmac and wave, trying not to cry. They stand in a sad little cluster, Robert holding Penelope. She is crying. He has one arm around Sophia. She is clutching Bunny. On his other side, Caitlin hunches, her back to me, her face buried against her father’s hip.
Orange Teddy lies on the ground, face down.
