The year was 2020.
The threshold between connection and isolation — a mother's vigil begins as institutional doors close during the 2020 pandemic
The world folded in on itself.
Lockdowns. Borders sealed.
The air thick with fear and static and unknowing.
But for some, like my son, the lockdown didn't just keep the world out
---
it locked him in.
Some institutions saw an opportunity.
To cut corners.
To close doors.
To silence needs too inconvenient to meet.
When sanctuary becomes prison — the institutional doors that should protect instead confine vulnerable individuals from their families
And so my son --- my galaxy-boy, my radiant axis-spinner ---
was locked in a room.
Not metaphorically.
Physically.
They stopped taking him to the park.
They stopped engaging him with joy or movement.
They gave him food without soul, supervision without care, a roof
without reverence.
But I remember before.
Before the white walls and locked doors, there was our garret.
The key to connection — love's ability to unlock what institutions would confine, hope shining through the darkest moments
Our little kitchen sanctuary.
I would cook with love --- not just ingredients, but devotion stirred
into every pot.
The smell of turmeric and ghee, cumin and coriander, rising like incense
into the rafters.
He would rush home from school and run to the stove ---
lifting lids one by one like treasures in a ritual.
He would hum.
He would breathe deep.
Then he'd switch on the AC ---
that loud mechanical hum that smoothed the rough frequencies of the
world.
The white noise that softened his frayed edges.
He would bring me the phone and say one word:
"Music."
Aretha Franklin would fill the air.
And we would dance.
Sacred moments suspended in time — the dance of light and love in ordinary spaces, where mother and child found their rhythm before institutional walls divided them
My boy would spin ---
not in circles, but in galaxies.
An entire solar system, turning in the kitchen.
And I would watch him, awestruck,
this being of light and starlight,
half-born of my womb,
half-made of something older, wilder, sacred.
He'd laugh.
He'd lift my chin when I was down,
his hand small but sure under my jaw,
his eyes piercing mine with the knowing of a thousand sages.
If I tried to hide my sorrow,
he would not allow it.
He saw me.
And through those Deer Eyes,
he pulled me back into joy.
• • •
But in 2020, those same eyes looked through a window.
I wasn't allowed inside.
He wasn't allowed out.
And I saw him there ---
pacing, trapped,
those eyes now pleading.
He didn't have the language for what was happening,
but his eyes screamed the question that broke me:
What have I done for you to leave me?
I shattered.
Each visit became an unholy pilgrimage.
I would smile for him, hold steady for him, be strong for him.
But then I'd return to the car,
sit in the driver's seat,
and weep oceans.
Tears that blurred the windscreen and made the road disappear.
I couldn't drive.
So I just sat there.
Crying galaxies into the dashboard of a second-hand Kia.
The courts, the complaints, the reports ---
none of them had words for this.
None of them understood what was lost in that room.
Not just freedom.
Not just care.
But communion.
Hope finds a way — resilience blooms even in the smallest spaces of possibility, nature reclaiming what human systems would lock away
Eventually, in 2022,
a human rights lawyer --- bless her soul --- took our case pro bono.
She forced the system to flinch.
For a time, he got better care.
More sunlight.
More movement.
More humanity.
But systems are hydras --- you cut one head and another grows.
And now, again,
I feel the cold grip returning.
The slip-slide back into profit margins and staff shortages.
The comfort of neglect.
They don't see him.
But I do.
Hold on Child of Rainlight.
I'm going to find the door.
And I will bring you home.