Archie. I woke up on that morning in June and knew you were coming.
I closed my eyes and thought of our home. The smell of eucalyptus, the sand sticking to my feet, the movement of the river. I held my mother, swaying, breathing deep and heavy.
Moving through the contractions, as though I’d been here before.
“Press your feet into the shallow sand and let the river move around you Darb.”
There was the warmth of my mum and her mum holding me; talking, swaying, exhaling.
There was the cold of the floorboards, the cold when your dad rushed through the door. Then there was more warmth.
Next came the white walls.
Looking up and seeing white lights, the cold on my back, the cold that came with the distance of your cry. I heard you long before I got to hold you.
Darby Ingram holding her son Archie on Wiradjuri Country Source: Supplied
At 23, the thought of you changed my whole world.
They say when a child is born, so too is a mother, but I know that there’s a part of me that has been here before.
What came next is written in water, too delicate to touch.
One day we will sit and I will tell you about the excitement and pride on your father’s face.
The rush of knowledge and concern and the yearning to be good and right and just as a mother.
I will tell you of the guilt and the grief that came with our birth that day. That trust is fickle and once it breaks, we will always see the cracks. I will explain to you how we moved through these changes as a family. I’ll tell you how we came home to Country and exhaled.
I got to know myself again and got to know you. You steadied me. I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you.
There is no way to define raising you. I rock you, sleep next to you. We learn our mother tongue together as a family. I am ashamed I don’t know it.
We sound out syllables and release ourselves from any burden they think we should carry. There is no shame in coming back to our way of life.
There is no shame in living a big life, in filling rooms with Blak boy laughter. Express everything, as deeply as you feel it. Don’t submit to what others say it is to be a Wiradjuri man.
You look at me as if I parted the clouds and painted a sunset just for you. I dance with you, humming. I show you the river. I weave for you.
I feel guilty knowing it took me this long to come home. You look at me as though I scooped up the Murrumbidgee herself and placed it in our backyard.
There are Songlines etched into your palms if you get bored of our bedtime stories. I feel ambition tick, tick, ticking and consider rushing.
You look at me as though the colour of our connection is in the golden brown of our eyes, or maybe the bronzing of our skin. I slow down again.
We learn about Yindyamarra. Our people did not know impulsivity, our people knew respect and understanding.
We learn about Waluwin. I focus on this word. I work on this healing.
Writing to you Archie, is healing. I record our history so that you know where you come from. Our people share our stories to say we were here.
You come from a small Island. From bright laughter and quiet moments of prayer. You come from gratitude and grace, where the colour of connection is the deep brown of your yaca’s skin or the blue of the Pacific.
I am sorry I can’t teach you much. I rush to make excuses. You look at me as though I am capable of learning too and I slow down.
Darby Ingram and her son, Archie, together on Wiradjuri Country months after his arrival. Source: Supplied
You come from men who stood tall and fought hard. Men who felt everything so deeply, who let joy and laughter overflow. Men who were headstrong and tenacious. Men of the same blood, same history and same name as you.
One day, years from now I hope you hold your Wiradjuri culture with pride and I hope you show up with the same vulnerability and willingness to learn.
If motherhood is motion Archie, stillness comes in knowing and raising you.
Darby Ingram is a Wiradjuri and Pacific Islander storyteller and writer based on Wiradjuri Country in New South Wales. Darby is the creator of the Future Ancestors podcast which platforms grassroots Indigenous excellence. She is mum to two-year-old Archie.
