Fireforged

My dragon is the woman with black ringlet curls, freckles tracing constellations over her warm skin. She laughs uninhibitedly at the Minions from Despicable Me, enough that you can’t keep yourself from laughing with her, and is never far from a cup of coffee. If you’re ever worried, her top three answers are to pray, drink water, and just don’t worry. Things are going to turn out the way they’re going to turn out, and they will be okay.

Her fire weaves through my blood. Her words of smoke fall out of my mouth amidst bumper-to-bumper traffic. The laugh lines I’m forming mirror hers. Her freckles pepper my skin.

The heart of her is soft, and bruised I think in places and ways she’ll never tell. What little she does share of her life before us bruises us with heart-hurt for the strength she wears like scales. Strength is heavy, a drenched double-knit sweater, and I know all too well the yearning for just a few seconds of reprieve. Her Mom left when she was young. Her Dad passed after she moved to Canada. We’ve almost been her family for longer than her own.

She raised her brood to work hard. Not that she told us that was what we had to do, but she taught through example and led by example. She works hard. She toils, cares, wears herself out to the bone. No one will ever claim she left a detail untouched.

There is a warmth in her that invites confidence. Share your secrets with this keeper and they will remain under lock and key, never to meet the light of day if she has any say.

She is proud. Reigning queen over her domain, she is the booming voice of governance. She controls the tides around her and should you cross her, your fate is held in her claws. She has shed layers of generational walls to try and soften the women after her, whether knowingly or not. She accepts change, she struggles to open her mind and succeeds, showing us it is possible and that it matters. Patience and growing tolerance curl as a glowing wreath around her heart.

She is quiet when out in the world. When I was growing up, I thought she was sometimes mean, but she has never wasted a flame. I’m older now, and little me felt scorched more times than I really was. Little did I know during those times that ‘mean’ was really ‘teaching her hatchling the ways of the world’, that mean was a veil behind which discipline would be revealed. She is tough because she learned to be, had to be.

I’m polite because of her, better not to burn bridges simply because we don’t like someone. I spread my wings over the souls I love and protect them fiercely, angrily, jealously. I roar when I am done an injustice and I hoard shiny trinkets I love in my very own, particularly made lair. She hoards yarn and plastic flowers and beautiful scents. I’m generous because she taught me to be. I live because of her.

Her flames forge a path we hatchlings strive to carry forward. Her magnificent presence and her magnanimous gaze warms even the sun, you feel it when you're near her and acknowledged by her.

How does one repay another for the gift of life? For the gift of respect and discipline? For the lessons taught in womanhood and fighting for what is right? How do you thank someone who blessed you with the electricity that keeps your heart beating 59bpm at 2:03am on a Sunday?

I soar because she taught me,

and I fly free because she let me.