The Ghost Children
by Dara McGarry
I’ll tell you a secret.
When I was in my twenties, I squirreled away as many baby items as I could: a pacifier, the springy thing that holds it because Julie said it was vital to have, the ergonomic baby spoon that Paula couldn’t live without, the tiny pink dress that I found that day at the mall with Ed and went back to buy it on my own, a beginner set of Legos. They were for the children I was going to have. I knew them, with their peanut butter faces and bouncy blonde curls, the late night feedings, the scraped knees. I could see them, my ghost children. I could see their faces.
But eventually I gave it all away after the marriage broke up and I was busy with a career and moving here, then there, loving, losing, living. Eventually, I had let go of it all, even the images of the ghost children which had played like a slide show in my head evaporated as if into a mist.
And when I told you I didn’t want to hold your baby because I was afraid I would drop her, what I really wanted to say was that I was afraid I would never let her go.
A native Nashvillian, Dara McGarry has lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, and currently London. Raised on a diet of Shakespeare, Twilight Zone, and Johnny Cash, she prefers to explore a variety of genres. After many years working in theatre, comedy, animation, and film, she is currently enjoying the literary pub scene in London and can usually be found poking at her computer somewhere in Fitzrovia. Any visitors from the states should please bring Tapatio Sauce.
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