Waiting for you, my tiny unborn grandson, my wee boy. I’ll hold you close, a heavy bundle of warmth against my heart. Your tiny fingers, sea-shell nails, will curve around mine. I’ll watch for your dark gems of eyes to open and gaze into mine.
I’ll change you, bath you, pile bricks for you to scatter, hold your plump arm as you paddle, point out the crab and the waving seaweed, read that book again, and again, and again... help with homework, wipe ice cream from your cheeks, wait in the playground.....
You’ll enter a wide world, full of dangers, challenges, opportunity. You’ll become a man – tall, laughing, bright eyed with excitement. Or crushed with frustration and blighted dreams.
And right now I have one chance, one real opportunity – for once, I can influence what your world will be like. What chances you will be offered. There is no status quo. This is a parting of the roads, a choice of direction, of which sort of change we want.
Voting No is a once and for all decision – the power will remain out of my reach, the power to change your world, my dear wee boy. The wars, the weapons, the poverty, the unemployment – I’ll only be able to watch from the sidelines as far away they decide what your life will be like. You’ll live in footnotes and parentheses, afterthoughts, Scottish addendums to the policies and legalities that will define your future.
Voting Yes is not once and for all – we can work the problems, embrace the challenges, grasp the opportunities – every election will bring us the chance to change things, again and again. A world that is designed with you in mind, by people like me, who care about you.
I will not gamble with your future, my lovely wee boy. I will not place it in hands far away that I cannot influence. I will place it where I and others who love you can change it and refine it, time and again. I can do this for you now. I can give you a new country.
Meg Lindsay, August, 2104
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