Recognizing that luck is a pervasive force in life is impossible given its often subtle and mundane presence. It is a word more often assigned to a lottery winner or a survivor of a lightning strike. Rarely is it noted in the fortune of picking a novel from the shelves of a used book store that will rapidly become a dear friend; sometimes, even, a life altering one. It is often glossed over in the long discussion between dear friends in front of a fireplace on a winter's evening. It is the grace of dew in the morning or frost on the windows or the fortuitousness of waking up naked beside another sharing a piece of your soul. It is in the heartfelt laughter of a child or the mercy of death that comes during sleep.

There are so many ways to be lucky and so many ways to ascribe our personal success to our own inherent worthiness. So much of our success and the course of our lives is the result of being in the right place at the right time. In being born in a specific geographic location. In the difference between a thriving or a failing public school being the closest in proximity to home.

I fell in love hiking in the Andes and again in the cramped twin bed of a dorm room and yet again laying beneath a grand piano while Clair de Lune echoed through an empty concert hall near midnight. I believe I once fell in love in a single evening drinking microbrews and listening to The Killers moan their way through "Everything Will Be Alright" in a dank, dirty bar in Portland. I have loved at least a dozen novels with a commitment and passion most reserve for intimate relationships. I have listened to the work of certain composers on repeat so many times that my iTunes top ten features songs played thousands of times and likely puts me in the company of individuals labeled with some version of violent psychosis.

I come from a good family where loving is an assumption; I have walked through every day of my life with a complete understanding that in the world there are four other souls who mostly understand mine and would hop on a plane if requested. I have loved animals more deeply than many humans and dear (dearest) friends with a terrifying, unconditional ferocity. I found a kind and gentle man who loves me with the persistence of the sun rising and find shelter in our unlikely pairing.

I have felt in my very marrow the quiet of the woods at twilight and gazed upon a moose and calf in the light of dawn. I have placed my hand on the trunk of an old, gnarled tree and felt humbled by my brief, insignificant existence. I have observed elephants suckling their young and water buffalo warding off a pack of lions and slept beneath the stars on the sand-bottom of a dry river thousands of miles from home.

I have fallen in love with this world and the infinitely diverse creatures who reside here a thousand times over and yet I find myself humbled, yet again, in finding that my knowing is so naive.

My love for you is rooted in spit up and sleeplessness and desperation and anxiety and deep-seated prayers about the world you will inherit. Its foundation is a body destroyed by your delivery and several months of wondering why and what and how I did this to my life. It is raw and vulnerable and unceasing.

I find myself overwhelmed by its fullness at the most unlikely times. Tears come to my eyes in the early mornings, when it is just you and I and you have spent at least ten minutes organizing your bananas, blueberries, and cheerios into exact piles. When I look at you and tell you I love you and you grab both my cheeks in your hands, the tears are unexpectedly there. And when you laugh from the very marrow of your bones because a word like axe or crinkly or toot seems just ridiculous, my heart nears bursting. It is your love of books and music and the way you dance to the beat that destroy me. It is your gentleness of spirit and the kindness that is so inherent in everything you do. It is that I feel so wholly and utterly undeserving of such unhindered joy.

It is the quiet moments with you that are unexpected. It is not the fact that I love you that is surprising but the sheer violence of it. A love that exceeds all the other loves I have ever known. It is the kind of love that fills and fills and fills until it necessarily must spill over and infect every aspect of my reality.

The night is still.

And I am blissfully alone.

The mountains are aged giants and the moon reflects perfectly a thousand times on the surface of the Colorado.

And I forget, for one minute, that the world is complicated. That, somehow, we are complicated.

There is freedom in amnesia.

Liberation in the company of giants.

Time is so malleable and so flexible. The first four months of A's life felt like years. Decades, perhaps. Trapped in the whirlwind of sleeplessness and screaming felt like a mini hell. I did not relish that time and I do not miss it. Our pediatrician asks us at every appointment if we are "having fun yet." The first time I truly responded yes was at her last check up. Nine months in I was starting to really smile again. Nine months.

There are these times that move so slowly and times that seem to move so quickly we are unable to fathom or process that we are hurtling forward at alarming speed.

Much of adulthood seems to fall under the alarming speed category and I wonder if this is because we put so many of the things that slow time down on pause. I ceased writing for a very long time. It's been years since I lay in bed until I was bored, dreaming up unknown lands and monsters and friends who exist only to me.

When I was a little girl, I would lay in bed as long as I possibly could, thinking that my brothers and dad would remark on just how long I slept when I finally came down. I failed every time. When I came down to join in the cartoon fest, the most I got was a suggestion to pour myself a bowl of cereal.

I remember the length of a summer day through my child eyes. From morning to night an entire kingdom could rise and fall. Alliances between brother and sister could shift and the friend you woke up to was the enemy by nightfall. Night games and toes pressed between green grass and mud felt blessedly long. Dusk falling neither too quick or too slow but precisely appropriate for the last game of hide and seek to feel peacefully, perfectly timed.

The recollections of childhood are more a long series of sensations. The long-awaited cool air of the evening pushing out the oppression of ninety degree days. Moths fluttering against walls in a dark room. The wretched thrill of jumping into a pool as the sun contemplates an entrance. Stars and tents and ancient cottonwoods and crawdads running through small hands. Bikes and the burn of being out of breath and soft sheets. The fear of under the bed and cracked closets and the abstract contemplation of death. Fresh-baked cookies and bedtime stories and the comfort of my brothers breath nearby as I drift to sleep.

Childhood is a fleeting embrace. Both ethereal and ephemeral. A memory of a trip once taken, both familiar and utterly, unattainably foreign.

While running this morning, I thought about what I would wear on Saturday (a day full of social plans...this is a big deal with such a wee child at home!). Crisp, early morning air, my legs straining beneath me, and the thought that came to mind was clothing. I could blame the domesticity of caring for a child or too much down time but there is no excuse, really. I fear a descent into middle age in which I find myself more concerned about my clothing or my hair or my wrinkles than I do ideas. 

Apathy and frivolity are the real dangers of aging. Distraction by thoughts that have no right to occupy mental real estate. When I was younger, I obsessed over the poor and hungry, the diminishing habitats for animals, and how I could make things better. I raged against injustice and cried empathetic (and helpless) tears as I went to bed at night. As I've aged, I find a fair amount of my mental energy turning to things that HGTV implies are important. The color of our replacement carpet. What I will wear this weekend. Whether my retirement fund is large enough.

Thoughts that distract from living in this present moment. Ideas that take me away from the joy of existing here and now. Of relishing every ray of summer sunshine before the inevitable winter. Of watching my child develop incrementally into her own person. Of relishing the final years of Arvo's life (he is getting slower, his hips hurt after long walks, but I cannot think about this too long or too hard or I fast forward to a place where my longest confidante is no longer here and THAT certainly still has the power to double me over).

The things that do matter are kindness. A conscious turning away from anger and pride. Embracing others precisely where they are. And striving against the instinct to quit, to think about paint colors instead of the truly urgent concerns of our time. Apathy is a choice. The difficult thing, of course, is realizing--in the midst of a sometimes violent and overwhelming and cruel world--that we have unconsciously and unwillingly made the choice.

Forgiveness has come to mind a lot lately. And you have, too.

Before things went so badly, I was mildly obsessed with you.  You were an enigma. Mysterious. Slightly angry but SO vulnerable (a particularly potent combination). I loved those things about you.

But things went so wretchedly poorly. And at the time, the only thing I wanted was for you to suffer. Which is about the least flattering thing I could say. But it's honest. You hurt my feelings and my reaction was especially playground. You hurt me, so I wanted to hurt you.

I heard, though, from a friend that you think I hate you.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Honestly.

I worry about you. I hope that you're okay. And while my child-self wants you to hurt, my adult self just wants you to be okay. To find your people. To find a home. And to be happy.

So let's retire the child, shall we? Let's all move forward and acknowledge that what happened before was a lousy mess. Nothing more to it than that.

I loved you once. As a human, I love you still. I hope you find beauty and grace. I hope you find a home.

I miss you. But not enough to journey down that path again. Farewell, friend. And safe travels to you, sir.

There are infinite stories to  be told. And so many ways to tell them. We write our stories with each minute of each day, blissfully unaware that we are in the middle of a great telling.

Your story has just begun. So far it is toys and laughs and papa and love and I hope that's what it will be for a long, long time.

I am tortured by the idea that your life will contain anything but beauty.  I know the day will come when you look in the mirror and you will hate what you see.  I know others have the ability to make you feel less perfectly yourself.  I know you will meet people who are cruel simply to hurt.

I wish I could keep you from those things.  I wish I could give you only the perfect calm of spring mornings, the peace of your lover's arms, the absolute bliss of your favorite song played too loudly.  I wish your eyes would only behold the infinite ocean, the great, large mammals, and the laziness of snowflakes cascading from an endless sky.

I am tortured that I cannot keep you as you are and bewildered that this is how we all begin.

If we all start so, what happens in between? And what is the difference between those of us who cope, who find a brave face, and those who cannot do so?  How much intervention and love is necessary in the years between what you are and what you will become to keep the most integral part of oneself intact?

If we all begin in such grace, what power life has to shape and mold us.  But I do believe that we have the power to push back.  To hold onto innocence. To laugh deeply and wholeheartedly. To love others as though it is our ninth month on this planet.

It is the wish of every loving parent that time would hold still.  I feel the world knocking at our door, biding its time at the periphery. For now, I rock you and love you so much that the emotion is visceral and palpable and blinding. As I feel my life slip quietly into May, I chant again and again and hope again and again that you shall walk a path of vivacity and grace and courage.

With the time that we have together, I promise to love you and laugh with you. To hold you. To comfort you even when you pretend you are too old (we are never too old). With the time that we have together I will share all that I love about music and books and living a life on the edge of madness. I will teach you that you are beautiful, your body strong and capable, and your dreams important and worth striving for.

And when my December comes, I will try to make my exit gracefully. To give you one last gift in my fervent belief that death is nothing to be feared. Even if I must wear a mask, I will leave you believing that I was utterly at peace, terribly accepting.  But I will mourn, quietly, all the moments of your life I will not see and all of the times that you needed my physical presence.

Early on, when I was really struggling with the changes you brought to my life, a friend told me that to become a mother necessitates a true death.  It is not a transition, not some minute change that can be achieved without struggle, but an absolute, heart-wrenching demise of the former.  In the midst of this transition, I raged.  I clawed toward my old self and my old life and mourned, mourned, mourned my independence and freedom and selfishness.

What I failed to understand, though (despite a lifetime of this being the case), is the infinite beauty of the transformation.  There is so much complexity and so much love.  So much vulnerability and growth. A tremendous part of my old life was eviscerated the day you entered our lives. But that has been filled with unexpected blessings and joy and humbling ignorance of what to do with a human so small.

You have altered my entire existence. And my days, my minutes, are all the better for the blessing of coming to know you.

I love you. And though it is maddening to write (and, I remember, maddening to hear), you will not understand the extent of which until you are here, in this precise place.  And when you are (if it is the choice you make, the path you walk), I hope the knowledge will fill you. I hope knowing the depth of this maddening love gives you the strength to be precisely who you are. To live courageously and without fear.

You and I were both born the day you came into being.

I should have written every day of the first six weeks of your life.  Every single day.  Because in the fog of absolute exhaustion, monumental moments are just a blur.  I know now why people do this more than once; one is so strung out, so completely overwhelmed by anxiety over whether such a seemingly fragile creature is thriving, that somehow it seems like a good idea again. I imagine, of course, that you will bring overwhelming joy to our lives as you get older but the first little bit...

And there you are, wee one....

To be continued.

When I was five or six, I would stay up at night, bawling and terrified that something would happen to someone in my family.  I would pray and pray and pray to God to look after each of them and hope upon hope that when I woke the next morning, each of us would still be there.  I would beg to God that if something terrible should happen (cancer, a burglary, nuclear holocaust...things children should be afraid of), it should happen to me.  At the time, I remember thinking that was some kind of courage.  Now that I have you, I realize it wasn't courage at all but cowardice.  It is easier to be the one leaving than to be the one left behind.  Now that I have seen your face and held you in my arms I understand vulnerability.  I have been vulnerable my whole life, but now that there's you, my chest is bare and naked and exposed and utterly destructible.  It is only easy for me to sleep at night if I don't think about these things.  If I assume that when I awake everyone I love is fixed permanently in their place.

Having a child--more than any other time in my life--has brought me face to face with my mortality. It wasn't so long ago that I was being rocked to sleep in my mother's arms.  And now I am rocking my own, beautiful child.  My first thirty years have flown and I am sure that yours will, too.  And then I will find myself in the place of my mother, watching as my own child raises her own.  I have come to the realization time and time again but the moments we have here are so fleeting and so quick to pass.  And inevitably, we must leave this world just as we have come.  And there are no guarantees that each of us gets to be a grandparent or a parent at all.

How terrifying.  Being a mother exposes you and skins you raw.  I have anxiety fairly consistently now.  Anxiety about life and death and sleep and schedules and feeding and weight gain and baby acne and bottle types and anxiety about my anxiety.  Part of it is the raging hormones from delivery. But part of it, I think, is a new reality.  A reality that no matter how calm or confident or great my day is going, I will always be half where I am and half wherever you are.  I will never be calm or content simply within myself.  Half my heart, my soul, and my mind will always be searching and praying desperately that you are okay.  It has only been three weeks, but already I am inalterably changed.

The sleep deprivation is better now that we're able to give you a bottle from time to time. Tim has been taking the night shift so that I can get four hours in a row which helps extraordinarily.  Part of my anxiety, I think, comes from not getting my requisite nine or ten hours.

But there are moments of extraordinary intimacy in those sleep deprived moments.  In the night, when you and I alone are awake and you snuggle into my chest and coo in the way I have become accustomed I think this must be a piece of heaven.  You are so, so small.  And you fit perfectly in the crook of my arm or tucked tightly into my chest. I had no idea in those long ten months that it was you I was waiting for.  But now that I have met you, each well-placed kick, bout of hiccups, and quiet morning moment makes sense.  You were in there all along, simply waiting.

We are three weeks into this journey.  You are growing so fast.  And time, despite my best protests (and occasional pleas to hurry up), marches steadily onward.  You will never, ever be three weeks old again.  So despite the stress and anxiety placed on top of sleep deprivation, I try to cherish each moment.  To love you. To hold you as often as I can.  Because soon, my love, it will be you writing to your first baby and I will be watching you experiment with this motherhood game.  But for now, a snuggle. And perhaps a diaper change.

Today I left you and I took the dogs and I walked.  And somehow over the course of the sleepless, endless nights, the leaves have turned yellow and fall is on its way.  You are two weeks old tomorrow and the change of season snuck by both of us without notice.  It is a nice time of year to be born, I think.  You came in the full heat of the summer and your arrival prompted the transition into hues of gold and red and yellow.  And now, whenever fall arrives, I will think of this time with you.  You are so small and so dependent and have brought so much joy.

Now that the massive waves of hormonal surges have passed, I can think more logically and rationally.  I'm not certain this is a good thing, however.  In the midst of my plummeting hormones and utter exhaustion I think I may have been closer to truth than I am in my more rested, more sane mind.  It is only on the edge of madness that I am my most honest, I think.  Otherwise, I am using coping mechanisms and fronts to hide the rawness of emotion.  The emotion that holy shit you came and you changed everything and it is so, so good but so, so terrifying.

People tried to prepare me for this in so many ways.  They told me things would be forever different. They offered interpretations of the extreme toll being a new mom takes on the body.  The most honest folks talked about the vulnerability and the fear.  But being arrogant as I am, assuming that somehow I would fare better, I didn't particularly listen.  So now, when I awake with you at two am and I am as strung out as I have ever been, I smile a bit at my arrogance and my assumption that somehow it was easier than folks warned.

You arrived at a temperamental time of year.  Right now, there is thunder and a tremendous pouring rain.  Just yesterday it was 90 degrees.  I cannot wait until you are big enough and the temperature is stable enough to take you out for runs and walks; I cannot wait to drag you up mountains and across country to see what there is to see.  There is simply so much to see and life is so short.  I cannot wait for you to see it all, every last inch.

I am still trying to come to terms with loving you.

The first week with you has been a blur of sleepless nights, raging hormones, and unexplainable tears.  I am stressed and tired and so utterly, inexplicably in love.  And anxious.  I'm anxious for no reason.  Anxious if you're getting enough food, if you're too hot or cold, if I've swaddled you tightly enough to keep you from moving during the night.  I'm anxious that my relationship with Tim will never be the same, that somehow your arrival will result in our marriage becoming a divorce statistic. I'm terrified of the vulnerability which accompanied your grand entrance to this world.  I will never be the same because now I can't think about myself without also thinking about you.  You have made me so, so very raw.  So exposed. I felt this way as soon as I got out of my first trimester, too.  Things weren't just about me anymore and it kept me up at night.  The world is less scary when the only thing you risk losing is yourself.  When you are so desperately in love with someone that their absence would utterly tear you apart the world is a bit more daunting.

I recognize, of course, that these are fear versus love choices I am making and that I am mostly choosing fear.  I blame the lack of sleep and the PTSD from your labor for that.

I labored for 30 hours to bring you into this world and it nearly ended in a c-section.  I started to feel something (God I prayed it was labor...almost 42 weeks of pregnancy is enough for any human) at 8pm on a Tuesday.  Tim and I went out for pizza at a wee little local place that just opened and I eyed his beer enviously.  He ordered the Perennial Aria and it cost $25 but he did it just because we were pretty sure that would be your name and we were certain you would be here by Friday since the doctors wouldn't let you stay in any longer.  I was so big at that point that I had to pull the table out from the booth to fit.  I was a first place waddler, too.  I believe at my walk at Chatfield that morning I was walking 24 minute miles.  24 minute miles. Pregnancy is a beautiful thing.

I stayed up late that night to see if the contractions would go away.  They didn't.  And so I went to sleep and did so pretty restfully until 1am when I couldn't sleep through them anymore.  We waited until morning (4:30 to be precise) and went to L and D where they discovered I was no more dilated than I had been at my appointment the previous day. They told me I could go and walk or head home. As I found it nearly impossible to walk through the contractions, we drove the 40 minutes home where I promptly went to bed to writhe around in an insane amount of pain every four minutes.

One of the things I find most remarkable about this experience is the fact that although I clearly recall thinking cognitively in the day after those sharp contractions that they were the absolute worst pain I have ever felt, I can no longer viscerally understand what that means.  In the same way that I imagined labor before ever having experienced it in this very hypothetical and detached way, my understanding of the feeling of it has returned to something of an imaginary stage.  It must be a miracle of nature and hormones and the incredible drive of the biological need to propagate oneself that we forget.  Because I remember the wrenching being absolutely unbearable.  And as 9:30am approached, each contraction held me and shook me and destroyed me (hypothetically, of course, since I can only remember recalling that they were awful, awful, awful).

When we arrived at the hospital at that point, I had dilated to a four and was admitted.  I was pretty convinced we were going to do a water birth.  But I was a big fat liar.  As soon as I arrived in my room, I asked for an epidural and they called the anesthesiologist immediately.  His name was Chuck. He was my favorite person in the entire hospital.  He'll probably be my favorite person for the rest of my life.

Regardless, as soon as we arrived in the room, my water broke.  I stood up to withstand the pain of the contraction and felt a wee drizzle and then more of a drizzle and it took me a bit to figure out what was happening.  And the crazy, gross thing that no one ever talks about is the fact that with each contraction, more and more amniotic fluid gushes out of your uterus.  Gushes.  With every push and pull of that amazing muscle, more fluid than you thought possible puddles around you.

Chuck arrived pretty quickly and from here on the story gets a little repetitive because with the pain dulled, the only thing left to do was wait for my body to be ready.  But my body did not get ready on its own because after laboring for about 19 hours I developed a fever and a headache and they ultimately decided I had an infection and would need IV antibiotics.  Shortly thereafter, your heart rate kept dropping and I had to roll around the bed with numb legs quite beached-whale like.  They played an audio of your heart rate throughout the entire labor.  After it was over and I was in a different, quieter room, I could still hear your heart racing in my ears.  After 17 hours of listening to your vitality, I fell asleep (very briefly as you were STARVING) with it still murmuring in my ears. Listening to it slow down was absolutely terrifying and I would roll and roll and move and rotate in order to get it back to normal and thank God every time I heard it rumble from 40 beats per minute to your usual 140.

Ultimately they decided each contraction was compressing your cord and pumped IV fluid back into my uterus (which, for the record, caused more pleasant gushing with each contraction).  After your heart slowed often enough, the midwife (Jessica) came to let me know I would be consented for a c-section.  If you were not out in two more hours or if your heart continued to have trouble, I was headed to surgery.

And this is the point in my labor that a very, very funny thing happened.  And I suppose it occurs often when folks are in a crisis.  I spoke to you and let you know you had better hurry things along if you wanted to make your own way into this world.  And then I spoke to my grandparents who have passed and my relatives and whatever higher power may or may not exist and I asked for help.  I asked for comfort because I was scared and I asked for a miracle because I did not want to go to surgery but I did want you to be healthy. And so I find myself, the eternal skeptic, ever hypocritical in asking for and finding comfort in the idea that those who have come before us have a role in shaping the destiny of those currently occupying this wee planet.  Because you, Aria, are as much a part of them as you are of me.  We are all a long, tremendous continuation of those who have come before and it was comforting to know that my mom and grandma and great grandma had all done it before. And, I imagine, they likely did so without the tremendous aid offered by my dear buddy Chuck.

Regardless, the two hours passed and with the help of my new favorite drug Pitocin, I felt a tremendous need to take a giant poop on the table. When Jessica checked my cervix, I had indeed dilated to a 10 and we were ready to get you out.

All the modesty I had been so preoccupied with during my pregnancy was immediately out the window.  I told Tim early on in the pregnancy that he could stand no where but at the head of the bed by my shoulders but, to be honest, I just did not give a damn.  I figured he had already seen me catheterized with water gushing down my legs rhythmically so the destruction of my vagina was likely no big thing.  I did not think that at the time, of course, because mostly I was just utterly exhausted and scared and praying you made your way safely to us.  I was 28 hours in and into my second night without sleep and the only thing I could focus on was the hours and days and months I spent in the pool and the incredible discipline it took to get there at five and the pain at the end of the last set of a 10,000 yard workout and the strength of will it took not to give up and simply stop and throw in the towel.  And so I focused on how much the butterfly kick sucks and how terribly the 200 backstroke hurts and how much the circuit my coach Ben created my senior year made me want to puke and I thought of all that time and how I hadn't given up and I pushed and pushed and pushed. During the process of your descent into my pelvis, your heart seemed to stabilize and shortly Tim was ooing and awing over the sight of your head.

I know for a fact that I pooped on the table approximately ten times.  The nurse (bless all their hearts) graciously cleaned it up and no one mentioned how absolutely disgusting it is to hang out in a room smelling someone else's shit.  Working in the medical field, I can attest that it's the worst smell in the world.  And at some point, I'm pretty sure, the numbness of the epidural led me to actually pee a little bit on the table.  And in the ultimate finale of having absolutely no shame, you crowned at a glorious 8 pounds and 1 ounce and made your way into the world through an exit which seems inappropriately small.

But when you arrived, no one cared at all about the exit.  Not at all.  Because all eyes were on you.

Your epic birth story continues here, however, because when you came out you weren't breathing. They suspected you may not be based on the tube with which they inserted the saline because they thought there may be meconium occasionally coming out of my uterus.  As such, they had preemptively called in the pediatrics team who were standing in the corner of the room (approximately six very professional and serious looking folks who would show up at 2am just to be certain that you would be alright...bless their hearts, too).

The epidural is a grand thing, but not grand enough to completely numb the sensation of a baby coming into the world.  When your head had finished coming out, the pressure was absolutely very real and very awful and very reminiscent of the contractions without an epidural.  But it didn't matter at all because I was just so thankful that you had come.

Although it's all very hazy to me, Tim tells me that every person in the room had a clearly defined role and performed it extraordinarily.  The minute you were out the umbilical cord was clamped and cut and you were handed to a member on the pediatrics team.  Tim rushed over to where they worked on suctioning and getting all of the meconium out of your system and my midwife worked on putting me back together.  They wheeled you away to the neonatal nursery which, I understand, is simply a matter of protocol as within a half an hour they had you back up in our room.

Regardless, in addition to the complication of the meconium, your cord was wrapped around your neck and my placenta had a couple of crazy anomalies and the infection was later confirmed to be chorioamnionitis likely caused by my water breaking and the subsequent exposure of my uterus to poop.  The stalled labor, they suspect, had everything to do with the infection weakening my system and your safe delivery into this world has everything to do with all the right people working on us that night.  Had we been somewhere else, somewhere smaller (or God forbid, at home) one or both of us wouldn't have made it.

I did not realize any of this initially, of course. At the time, I was simply focused on the task at hand. But when I take a step back and realize all the ways things could have gone so, so terribly wrong, I realize how lucky we were.

In the days following the delivery, I do think I have suffered a bit of shock over the whole thing, a bit of trauma.

Whether it was my relatives to whom I shot some desperate prayers or the powers that be or simply a tremendous moment of grace in both our lives, I am extraordinarily thankful to be holding you in my arms tonight.

To be continued when I have slept.  Just a little.  Because I know you will be up again soon and the sleep deprivation shall continue.

There are so many things I wish I had written down before now.  But as with so many other things in life that are so monumental, when we are going through them, we rarely appreciate their beauty.

There are so many things I have thought to tell you in the last few days.  I know there are tons of hormones in my system and I am exhausted and this whole thing has been utterly overwhelming but I also know that what I am feeling is very real and that you should know just how you have impacted my life.

We should start, however, at the ugly beginning.  And the ugly beginning is that I had you pictured in my mind as this thing that would happen to Tim and I and it would be awesome and life altering but I didn't love you as anything more than a hypothetical.  And to be honest, as the pregnancy progressed I even resented some things about it.  I hated the ugly red tiger scratches on my belly and the way doing anything more than elliptical at the gym seemed outlandish and nuts.  I hated the stage where I felt chubby instead of pregnant and I could tell people did a double take as they weren't sure, either.  I hated when my face filled out and my stomach extended beyond the point of being able to see my toes.  I hated not being able to bend over and I hated the way none of my clothes fit any longer.

But that whole thing, that prior paragraph, doesn't do much besides tell you that I was very concerned about superficial things.  Things that don't truly matter.  And does it redeem me, at all, to say that I am very much not concerned about those things now?  Does it make it any better if I tell you I look at my pregnant self and laugh because the bottom line is I missed the whole point.  The whole point. Which is that you have utterly and irrevocably changed everything for me from here on out.  That I sit and I cry (not out of sheer exhaustion, I promise) but out of sadness that you are not in my tummy any longer and that every night we go to bed is another day I won't get with you again.

But I move too quickly.  Because the first thing we have to talk about is labor and what a ridiculous and insane experience that is.

You were late.  12 days late to be precise.  I waited and waited and waited and worried that my body was broken.  That maybe I was genetically unable to go into labor on my own. And so I passed the time, bloated and edematous, largely on the couch.  I still got out to the dog park every day but beyond that was so exhausted and ready to meet you that most days passed in a blur.  A blur of Home and Garden TV and sleeping until 9 or 10 (uninterrupted, I might add) and going to movies and restaurants with Tim at our every whim (which, honestly, was less than it should have been because making people is a lot of work).

I felt you rumble around in my belly and now that I know you I know how magical that really was. But before I met you, I didn't quite get it (and for that I am very, very sorry).  It was you in there. YOU. Every knock and tumble was a message, a reminder that we are inextricably linked. Every kick that I felt or spurt of hiccups wasn't some imaginary thing that would just disappear on its own.  What it was all leading up to was us meeting.  And I feel like maybe you knew that all along. You floated along in there, memorized my heart beat, ate what I ate, and experienced what I did.  I remember one day, in particular, that I was quite upset and you kicked and kicked and kicked the living daylights out of me.  We were sharing one space, one body system and somehow I didn't even have you pictured as a real thing, a real (and amazing) human I would meet shortly.

And now that I've met you, I wish I could rewind and record and write every single detail of every single kick and punch and hiccup because I realize that we will never have those days again. I loved the way you would sometimes wake me up in the morning with a huge rumble and somersault and the way certain foods made you crazy. I loved laying in the bath and watching your hands or feet distort my stomach. Being with you during that time (however uncomfortable) was just truly special. There can be no closer bond, I would imagine. I am so grateful to have spent those months with you, whale-like and insecure or not.

I had to have my membranes stripped twice in order to get you to come.  By the time they did that, I couldn't walk without my relaxed pelvis grinding against itself and I couldn't roll in bed without the use of serious inertia and dedication.  I was ready.  But again, now that I'm sitting on this side, I realize I had no idea what ready was.

But it's late and you're hungry and I'm tired so I will get back here tomorrow.  I will tell you more. Because the parts of this story that come next are the most important parts.  The parts where I got to meet you, where we both were so very, very sick, and the part where you changed everything.  In my life there are lots of before and afters.  The one with you, though, it matters the absolute most.

But that, I fear, is a story for another night.

As I have gotten older, it has been so hard to find time to put thoughts down here.  I pray artistry is something I never lose.  Because when one does not write or sing or feel the thoughtful crescendo of another artist to the very marrow of one's bones, it is the soul that is at the greatest risk.  We must, above all else, never lose appreciation of the small beauties that make our existence here so, so very rich. Noting the beauty of a moon floating behind wispy, grey clouds or the marvel of young ducklings chasing after their mother. The way a good movie can shake strongly held beliefs or Beethoven's 9th can take you to another world entirely.  Wordsworth's poems as a balm to the coldness of the exterior world or Tokien's imagination as a reminder that magic is just around the corner.  We would lose so much if we were all mathematicians and scientists.  The world would be so flat and gray.  We would, I believe, cease to be human.

As my life has become more hectic and more filled with adult things, I find a bit of the joy of youth has naturally faded.  Sometimes I neglect to note small moments of beauty or I don't have time to record thoughts here.  I don't find time for Bach or Portman or Faure.  Time moves quickly and I wake up another year older having neglected words and music and the very marrow of existence entirely.

Sometimes I think it might be a bit of a conspiracy.  Keep us all so busy that we don't have time to think.  Keep us so weary and so tired that we don't have time to analyze the meaning behind our actions.  At forty hours a week in addition to a commute we hardly have time to cook dinner let alone wonder why (WHY!?) we live the way we do.  So removed from community.  So removed from family.  So removed from the very arts which have been an expression of humanity from our earliest beginnings.  We miss a good deal in our modern society.  If only we had a wee bit more time.  More moments to pause and gape at the beauty of the world.

It's like waking up, being here now.  Being here with you, really, which I suppose is a strange thing to say since you're still largely a big bundle of cells rapidly duplicating.  I've felt guilty that I'm not more excited, that I'm not somehow more bonded to you.  I've met women who seem to know their baby before its born.  Right now, though, it seems like we're mostly sharing the same space.  Because I don't feel drastically, starkly different.  I'm still me.  I've just been exhausted and insanely nauseous for the past four weeks.

I'm excited to meet you, though, when you make your appearance.  I hope you feel all the love and joy that is your due.  I hope you feel the warmth of our home and trust our embrace.  Because you will be loved.  I hope you have no doubt about that.

Spending a forever with anyone is a gift.  Trying and arduous and tortuous and obscenely beautiful.

I see couples daily who waddle in together at ninety.  Who laugh at one another's hypochondria.  Who fill in the missing pieces of confused and dawdling medical histories.  Who hold one another's hands during procedures which seem so foreign and terrifying and confusing.

The intimacy of several decades is irreplaceable.  Astounding.  But truly a test of endurance. Dedication.  Commitment.

I used to be under the impression--and continue to be, on the odd Tuesday--that commitment makes things dull.  That some of the shine of life erodes with days and days stacked one upon the other with the same face, the same hands, the same sex.

And yet, perhaps, I judge too harshly.  Too quickly.  Perhaps the real art is the making of something lovely over the course of many monotonous days.  Of looking at the one you have chosen and consciously loving them every single day for as long as you both live.  In laughing as bodily functions become intimate and inside jokes become so layered that one intermingles with the others in a perfectly seamless manner.

Perhaps the true test, in the end, is not of unconscious and tortured dedication but of creativity.  Of waking each day to a new nuance of a partner's humor, a new gray hair, a new song that speaks to you both on such a deep level that you play it on EVERY juke box in every bar you happen to wander into in any midwestern city on any day.

Perhaps the beauty, as with so many other things, is in the choice.  Is in the finite, inordinately stunning moments of utter mundanity that, somehow, become rich because of the human beside you.

There are so many things I would tell you, were you right beside me snacking on a bowl of cereal at ten pm.

I would tell you how exhausting and utterly creatively deprived working forty hours can be.  The waking up, the commuting, the ten hour shift, followed by a quick dinner, and repeat for four more days.  I believe this whole system is bonkers and we have all lost our minds.  Money is, after all, a made up thing.  It means something only because we say it does.  But there is food and heat and comfort here and so we sell our lives to a job because it is easy.  Because it is comfortable.  I would tell you I see the insanity in these days, in these minutes that are racing by.  I see them but cannot change things for now.

I would tell you, immediately afterward, that while I say I cannot change this situation I am lying to you.  Any of us, at any given moment, can change every single thing about the current trajectory of our lives.  I believe now--as I did so many years ago--that our dreams are only a moment away.  An insane moment of bravery from existing.

So perhaps the startling truth is I am just lazy.  Or ready to be mindlessly numb for a bit.  Ready to pay off some loans.  To have some real paychecks.  To feel grown up for the first moment since we graduated so many years ago.  To wear my big kid panties (they are, still, endlessly childish).

I would tell you that I want my own children, despite my rantings and ravings about how selfish the decision is.  I would even soulfully admit that, if possible, I would like more than two.  I would like them all to be close in age so that at times my home is nearly erupting with insanity.  I want things, my time here, to be as wild and out of control as possible.  I want a home spewing with love and family and busyness and devotion to one another and the world. I want these things even though I would have denied it just a few years ago.

I want, most of all, to still believe in ideals and the beauty of human beings as I continue to walk on this planet.  I want to see a sunrise and the mountains in the west and find myself utterly breathless at the sheer beauty of the gift of being alive.  I don't want a single moment to lose its shimmer because I still ardently believe my child eyes were the most honest.  The least tired.  The least jaded.  And I hope I can always recognize just how much it matters to believe in something.  Anything, really.  So long as the belief is deeply rooted, pervasive, and eruptive into the fabric of every detail of one's life.

And of course, my dear friend, I would end in telling you how much I adore you.  How much I love you.  How much I miss our gallivanting but recognize its passing as I must the passing of so many other beautiful moments in life.  That time is complete and we served one another so well.  Continue to do so (as evidenced by these words).  But it is not our time to be together any longer.  You have gone and I have gone and all we have between us now is the change our meeting catalyzed.

I love you so dearly.  I hope you recall in each bowl of cereal and microbrew, each practical joke entailing the use of new car smell, and every book nailed to the wall of an apartment (has there ever been more than one?) that there is beauty in every action.  In every moment.

Be brave, my dear one, in moments of adversity.

Generous in the presence of need.

Hopeful in the company of skeptics.

Loving to those who are lost.

Joyful despite your darkest moments.

Sincere to all those you meet.

Be true to the voice which has been with you all these long, long days.

And if cornered, recall there are many, many escapes from a puzzle.

Know that you are surrounded by love.

And that you will find me, my dear one, not far from you.

Because my heart rests--it always has--nearest to yours.

I wish you were here.  There are a thousand things I would say to you and you would nod in silent understanding.  Because you have always simply understood.

They say laryngeal cancer.  And now I understand it's just a vague term we use for the random, overproduction of certain cells.  We categorize because humans must.  But we understand so little about the disease.  And each of us responds to it and the archaic treatments we provide in such a different way that it is difficult for me to feel calm about this.  It is difficult for me not to feel panic and fear and terror and multitudinous other out-of-control emotions about what is to come.

There will be radiation and sickness and an inability to swallow.  And maybe he will be here when it is all done.  But maybe he will linger, momentarily, before disappearing from our lives forever.  And forever is such a very, very long time.  And I don't know what that absence will do to those I love.  I don't think they will be the same afterward.  I don't think they will be okay.

Because the death of family is something that changes the world forever.  It becomes slightly less full than it was.  There is an absence, a chair which was once filled at the dinner table.  We move on because we must but perhaps not willingly.  The world takes on a different hue, a darker one.  And every memory, however beautiful, is marked by the absence of shared experience with the one who was lost.  Everything that person is not there for is touched by a sadness, tinged with a sense that things are somehow incomplete.

I worry about those I love because I wonder if they will be capable of being the same afterward.  I dread the pain which will become all of ours during the grueling physical incapacity of treatment.  I dread watching those I hold most dear walk this journey with an outcome which is far, far from certain.

There are no words for me without you.  Emptiness and loneliness fall too flat.  They're too cliche.

The air here, without you, it's thinner.  And joy seems impossibly foreign.

But even those are cliche.  Mundanities.

This without you, this thing without you--having known you for a fraction of a second--makes the entirety of life ahead seem too long, too hard.

Having known your lips.  The ecstasy of exhausted kisses.  The comfort of being your little spoon. Knowing I laugh like that for you. Only for you. Knowing this life devoid of you is missing numerous belly strains. Devoid of church giggles. Devoid of turning misfortune on its head.

You made my home where our hearts rested.

And without you, I find myself homeless.

I miss you.  It is too late to say that, of course.

I love you.  I am too mature to transgress in such a way.

And so I shall simply say, my dearest, good luck.

I hope your heart finds a place to rest.

It wouldn't be so bad if it happened to be near to mine.

Children.  A word gargantuan enough to swallow me whole.

A blessing if I am able.

A plague if I am not.

In every book I have read, I am not certain there is an author adept enough to portray the necessary changes which must occur when bringing another life into the world.  Parents vehemently tell me that nothing can prepare me, that nothing comes close.  And so I necessarily must concur because I see a shaky conviction in their eyes, a weightiness to their statement that infers a knowing which cannot be expressed through any method but sheer knowing.  Through feeling the thing plopped down into your arms some odd Tuesday having never held a baby before let alone changed a diaper.

And it is this silence, this beyond words nature of children that truly terrifies me.  There is an old adage that to read many books is to live many lives.  I feel--having read like a psychotically ill loner--that I have lived many, many times over.  And yet, I feel parenthood is not something I can really touch.  It is not something I can understand.

And so I stand on the precipice of this decision an utterly blind person.  If I do then it "changes you forever in so many wonderful and indescribable ways (big fake, condescending smile)" and if I don't, then I am selfish and one of the losers in Darwin's survival of the fittest model.

I am so, so torn about the entire topic.  I want children because I think little humans are lovely and have so much to teach us about the world.  But on the other hand, I don't want to bring another, stinking human into the planet.  I feel like I do okay as far as humans are concerned and, even so, about 80% of the time I'm not very proud of my environmental or socioeconomic consciousness.  

And so I am at a crossroads of defying social convention by being the loner infertile womb or doing it and rushing head first into an adventure for which I am not certain I'm prepared.

I have never had warm, maternal feelings.  I doubt I ever will.  I am much too neural.  Much too close to insanity.