Title: Journal of a Mother's Heart
Author: Jedi Trace
Timeframe:The Unifying Force and beyond
Characters: Mara Jade Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Ben Skywalker, Solo family
Genre: Vignettes, series
Keywords: Introspection, humor, drama, angst
Summary: Excerpts from the journal of Mara Jade Skywalker as she reflects on motherhood and life as a family.
Notes: This is a work in progress and new chapters will be posted as they are written.
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns it, I don't. No profit is being made. This applies to all future chapters.
Many special thanks to rhonderoo, my friend and beta.
Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. –Elizabeth Stone
Hope
The fact that I am a mother is living proof that the Force has a sense of humor.
Luke thinks I'm underrating myself when I say that, but I saw the Net poll when we got married that ranked me as the worst possible candidate for the job, and for once, I agreed with the holo gossip.
Parenthood is something for which I have absolutely no frame of reference. The only things I can really remember from my own childhood are endless hours of blaster practice, combat lessons, and running sims on every type of ship known to Imperial intelligence.
I lost track of how many nannies I had, but they all had the same stern and aloof personality. I rarely had one for more than a year at a time. Looking back, it was probably part of Palpatine's way of keeping me from getting attached to anyone. Not that any of that matters now. He's dead, thank the Force, and if I'd known then what I know now, I'd have gladly helped Vader with the deed...or at the very least, held his cape.
Fortunately for Ben, Luke is the most natural father imaginable. He says that it's because he had more practice with his niece, nephews, and children at the Jedi academy, but he doesn't fool me. There's a light in Luke's eyes around his son that could rival the suns of Tatooine.
I thought I'd seen every nuance of happiness in my husband's face, but none of them compared to the night Ben was born.
I can still see Luke leaning close to my bed in the medical ward of the Errant Venture, tears of joy streaming down his face. His breath was warm against my ear when he whispered in awe, "It's a boy, Mara. And he's healthy…perfectly healthy."
Healthy. He knew my greatest fear was that our baby would have been somehow be harmed by the Yuuzhan Vong disease, but he laid that fear to rest with a single word.
The bundle he held in front of me blurred and I squinted, struggling for a glimpse inside before succumbing to the darkness, to the consuming illness to which I had offered my body in exchange for the life of our baby. But the darkness did not come.
Instead, Luke's eyes and the tiny blue replicas of them in the blanket grew clearer.
Their faces did blur then and Luke reached over to wipe the tears from my cheeks. His eyes met mine and, even in our most intimate moments of joy, I had never seen them shine so brightly.
I have often seen that look since when he gazes longingly at the most recent holos of Ben sent faithfully from his guardians in the Maw.
It was while sorting through those very holos in a storage case on the Jade Shadow that I found this empty journal. A wedding gift from Leia, I'd forgotten all about it.
A strange gift, I thought at the time, until one quiet afternoon several years later on Coruscant. Han, Luke and the children had gone to a charity flight show hosted by Rogue Squadron, and Leia and I sat on the balcony drinking afternoon cocktails.
I can't remember how the conversation turned to family memories, but Leia suddenly stood and went into the apartment. She emerged carrying a protective case which she placed gently on the table, "I want to show you something."
Inside the case was a small holo journal. She switched it on and the first thing I noticed was the uncanny resemblance between Leia and the older woman looking back from the screen.
"It was my grandmother's. She kept it after my father left home to become a Jedi." Leia's voice was calm with no trace of the anguish over the discovery of her father that I knew had once plagued her. The ghosts of the Sith no longer haunted my sister.
"You look like her."
Leia smiled proudly, "That's what Luke said, too."
We spent the rest of the day watching holo entries as Leia occasionally interjected details of the fateful trip to Tatooine that had introduced her to Shmi – and Anakin – Skywalker.
Leia's brown eyes, her grandmother's eyes, met mine as she confided that it was this journal that had convinced her to have children of her own. Seeing the world through Shmi Skywalker's eyes had changed her, she said. Not in a way that was monumental, like the explosion of a Death Star, or even outwardly evident - but inwardly…inaudibly.
"Sometimes," she had mused, "I think Fate itself hinges on the silent moments of change. When the rest of the world is ignored and the heart can listen, and speak. When we submit to something greater than ourselves."
I think I teased her about sounding like she was addressing the Senate – but she was right.
Again, I am reminded of Ben and the miracle of our family. The Force willed his conception and brought him safely into existence through no act of my own other than to surrender to its power and the love of my husband.
To be so intimately acquainted with the Force, the Skywalker family is surprisingly bereft of tangible objects of that legacy. Shmi's journal, Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber and a few artifacts from Tatooine and the Clone Wars are the only heirlooms that we will pass on to our children.
Other than Ben, of course, I have nothing of my own to contribute to our family. In fact, by any known records, I did not even exist until halfway through my second decade of life.
Ten years ago, as a newlywed, I never expected that I would use this journal. But now, I think it's not a bad idea, really, seeing as how women with the last name Skywalker have a disturbing tendency to simply disappear from existence.
Ten years ago, I also never expected to be living in a cave on Zonama Sekot waiting for...we don't know what. An end? A beginning?
I miss Ben. It's been almost a year since we saw him last and everyday that we're apart I grow more restless. In a moment of panic this morning, I made Luke promise to take care of him if something should happen to me. An unwarranted request, I know. Luke would give his life a thousand times over for our son.
I hope it doesn't come to that.
I hope that we can grow up as a family and that Ben will have the life his parents did not have. I hope that this journal will not become a memorial keepsake, but instead, fodder for laughter at old grandmother Mara's fumbling attempts at this thing called motherhood.
I hope to hold Ben's own small children on my lap someday and tell them the story of how a brave Jedi Knight rescued an angry young woman from herself...and captured her heart.
I hope.