Seeking a friend for the beginning of the world

In the beginning...

     It was dark. A vast infinite dark, a lonely dark, a dark in need of a light. But I Am the Light. Only, I Am alone. 

     "But I Am the Great Creator. Let me create a playmate, a friend," I say to myself as there in no one else ...yet to talk to.

     Because I love my friend, my child-to-be, I plan his home with the love and fussy care a newborn parent will someday prep for their little one. I've foreseen it. I design a perfect world. After all I'm God, that's what I do.

    The Earth I dress like a bride, fresh and rosy on her wedding day. She wears every color imaginable and then some. Jade forests, wheat-colored plains, terracotta deserts, rouged-mountains, and snow-white tundras. The oceans I paint in shades of blue and green. I love the ocean, it's clean and vast, it's chasms as deep as my child's heart will be. I sprinkle them with salt, the same salinity I place inside my child, the taste of tears. Happy tears, I taste them on my own tongue as I prepare my child's world.

     Next, I blow on a light. The light of a sun I made a million years before, it's warm and bright and will make things grow. It will remind my child I'm the Light of the World.

     The world looks radiant bathed in light but too quiet. So I populate it with creatures strange and marvelous. Four-legged, two-legged, no-legged. This is more fun that I've had in a million years. I imagine my child looking in wonder at the vast array of animals sharing the world. What great conversations we will have lying on our backs gazing at the stars I created for us, other planets. These practice planets were unworthy of my child's home, but they twinkle above us, our belly's aching from laughing at the monkey's antics and marveling at the anteater's long tongue.  I gift these animals to my child as a birthday present. I know my child will cherish them and keep them safe.

     I take in a deep breath now. I breathe in the power of the universe and blow it back out into his lung's, my firstborn babe. It powers up his heart and brain. My clockwork son, his organs tick-tock in a pre-designed synchronicity, each piece dependent on each other the way he will depend on me.

     His eyes open, my heart is full. He's beautiful, a watercolor image of myself with the potential to change shade as he adapts to his diverse world.

     I can't help myself. I wrap my arms around my son, Adam, A for the beginning of the universe and the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I squeeze him tight smelling the warmth of his hair and skin till I can feel the pulse of his heartbeat against my own swelling chest. A father's love. Wow! I Am good. There's nothing so powerful as the love I feel for this man, my son, my friend.

    I feel his mouth open. My ears perk up to receive his first words, the beginning of so many deep conversations.

     "Let me go. You're holding me too tight," he says between clenched lips.

     I release him.

     At once, he scans the Earth. "What is this? It's dirty." He kicks up a cloud of virgin dust. "You expect me to sleep outside with the animals." He kicks a snake slithering by. It rattles a warning, his bad mood is catching.

     "Be kind, my son. I gave you dominion over them and that kind of power deserves respect and a clear head." I lead him away from the desert to a garden lush with fragrance and soft patches of grass to soothe his feet or lay down his head in sleep.

     "Achoo," he sneezes. A slug-trail of snot sticks to his upper lip. "These flowers make me sneeze. Can't you dig them up?" He pulls a white rose from a bush pricking his finger.

     "Here. Let me heal that." I reach out to staunch the flow of blood darkening the ground below. The earth groans, it likes the taste, it wants more.

    "Why would you make such a horrible plant? Do you want me to hurt myself?" Adam sticks his finger in his mouth, a pout closing around the wound.

     "No, the thorns deter animals from eating it. I've created a perfectly balanced world that can exist without my nagging presence hovering over it so I can spend all my time with you." I point to a bee's gold-dusted legs as he drinks the nectar of a honeysuckle bloom and flies off to pollinate its mate. I smile at my boy and take his hand. "Let's walk and talk."

     "Stop smothering me. If you really love me. Set me free." He stares me down, hands at what will be called akimbo, feet planted apart in defiance.

     "Fine." It's another new word, one packed with different meanings and tones all in one telling syllable. "I love you more than any word I can create. So I will give you freedom. Just don't hate me for it later."

     He snatches it from my open palms, wrapping it around himself like armor. He's clothed now, just not invulnerable as he would be if he stayed with me.

     I watch my son, my longed for friend walk away from me, his unchallenged stride sure and cocky. He breaks off a sharp branch from a nearby tree. Stabbing the ground with it, he practices making holes. But none are as big as the infinite hole in my heart. I sit on a rock, smoothed to perfection for my son to rest upon and wonder where I went wrong. At my foot lies the white rose, trampled and dotted with crimson spots of blood but still beautiful and generous with its fragrance.

     I smile. I Am the Creator and the Light. My child should be too, strong and sturdy and generous with joy and love. This time I blow my Light, not the power of the universe into my new child's lungs. It blows through her heart all the way to her eyes, they sparkle brighter than the stars in the firmament. She will be my light in dark places. Looking up, she gifts me with her stare and her smile before embracing me in a hug to end all hugs. Her first words -"I love you" fill my infinity. She pulls back but not away, just far enough to look me in the eyes and say "Thank you".