Taking Flight

Tuesday night I drive from my parents through the winding, rural roads. Back home. And it seems like every bird that ever flew an Ontario sky is heading out during that drive. It was coming on eight o'clock and the sun was beginning to set. Made me weep openly to see them all. He was asleep in the car seat in back. Just turned four months old last Sunday. The drive makes me recall the night my twin sister drove us home from the hospital after the week that seemed like a year in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Home. Migration always makes me wonder: are they going home or leaving home? I like to think that the birds I'm watching take flight are leaving home. That this part of Southwestern Ontario is where they call Home. I take comfort in the knowledge that they'll come back.

I love the way Canadian Geese line up in their own personal arrow formations, their wings in wondrous, dark contrast to the pink that kisses the few, scattered clouds. It makes me turn off the iPod in my Subaru and roll down the window to hear them. Among my favourite sounds. And one of my cherished sights is the way starlings all swoop together as they leave. A group ahead of me takes the shape of a fish and floats over the cornfields that dip off to my right. All in perfect unison. Like synchronized swimmers. Diving and surfacing together. How do they do that? Kind of mesmerizing. Bad for driving.

When I was pregnant with him, I caught this astounding documentary at the Princess Cinema in Waterloo called Winged Migration. It was right around the time I'd begun to feel my own first flutterings of him and pretty breathtaking to witness. Birds seem to have some tie to my little man. Starting with that robin's nest above the side door of my farmhouse to the little mobile of three woolen owls who hover over his crib, representing the spirits of the siblings he might have had, the babies I miscarried in 1998, 2003 and last September, his own fraternal twin. They watch over him. It was an owl's "who-hoo-hoo-hooooo-hooooo" which greeted me my very first night in this farmhouse, just outside my bedroom window. In Celtic mythology, birds are considered messengers. It's very important to listen to what they're trying to tell you. Like that bird who guides the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe through the forest to the safety of Mr. Tumnus' home.

The pines behind my home stretch up into the darkening sky and I bring him out onto the back deck. The constant, clamouring chatter of starlings surrounds us. I smile down at him in his seat and his hair captures a glint of sunset as my clap shocks the starlings into flight, halting their song; they simultaneously take wing together, dipping and darting across the back field, leaving my home. And theirs.

This month, I am heavy in preparation for selling this farmhouse. We stayed at my parents the past week so the rooms could be painted with soft, muted colours. Names like Earth Smoke, Smoked Trout, Soft Earth, Manitou, Tent, Tofino. We will be leaving this place. His first real home, and mine. I bite my lip. I've no idea if she will even sell before the snow flies. If not, I'll batten down the hatches and hibernate one more winter here and hope to move come spring. I've been here nine years and maybe it's time now. I admit the care of these 1.3 acres on my own for almost three years has been a bit of a challenge and will only prove moreso as he grows and demands more and more of my time and attention (though he gets pretty much all of it already). He needs, I think, a town versus this remote spot. I hate leaving here. It's one of a number of things breaking my heart right now. But I know a move will be better for him. I hope it will be better for me. Either way, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. What's that saying? A rich child sits in a poor mother's lap. Realistically, I know we will both benefit from moving to an actual neighbourhood. With a shorter driveway. Better resources. With other children. Other families. Other parents. Other single parents, perhaps! I look forward to the idea of bicycling or walking to work. The main country road into town can get a bit dicey come the winter time. Life has brought so many changes since deciding to leave my common-law marriage almost three years ago now. And change is good, I remind myself. He is here with me now. It's a good time for this particular change to come...

But I will miss all these birds taking wing across the farmfields. The robins nesting in my doorway and blue spruce. The killdeer in my driveway. The starlings. Barn swallows. The blue herons flying with their long legs outstretched behind them over the back creek. Their nests on the third line way, high up in the trees. The hummingbirds at my front window and backgarden. That hawk my eyes always seek in one, special tree during my morning and evening commute each winter. The Canadian geese who land each Spring when the back field floods. One year, a few years back, a lone, white swan joined them there. When I was a little girl, I would read and re-read E.B. White's Trumpeter Swan. These days, I am re-savouring his (and Strunk's) The Elements of Style while attempting query letters to various editors of magazines. Another book on birds comes to mind: Too Many Blackbirds by my old American Lit professor, Dr. Ken Ledbetter. He died much too young back in 1993. A favourite memory is of his class the morning he informed everyone how to properly address a ghost upon encountering one. You must first ask politely, "Are you a good ghost or a bad ghost?" This proved helpful advice here in this farmhouse built in 1848. It is not without its own many and varied spirits.

I know the very cherished memories I will hold, from the cedar hedges to the smell of the woodstove, the sight of a 160-year old apple tree in blossom, the witnessing of the Aurora Borealis while standing in my front yard to the shooting stars of the Perseids each August seated on a Muskoka Chair out back: such rich and vibrant images will stay with me all my days once I leave here. That will be some good haunting.

I am writing this in the middle of the night. It's 3:30 a.m.. Stolen moments. Rising from my bed where I've just fed him, his arms are outstretched as though he is flying through his own dreams. I think about migration and about what makes a home. My own parents leaving their home in Ireland and emigrating to Canada. Myself making a new home with him somewhere else. Waterloo-Wellington County has been my home for so damn long, a large part of me wishes we were starting over somewhere farther away. Nunavut. Nova Scotia. New Zealand. There's a whole planet out there yet to discover together. But I know that this is home for me. The mennonite farms. All the local farm markets, small town and music festivals. And my own little sonshine. Whereever he is will define home for me.

For now, I watch the birds rise up to guide my way towards another beginning somewhere new and familiar at the same time. What comes to mind is my eldest sister's beautiful vinyl recording by Judy Collins of that old Sandy Denny song, Who Knows Where the Time Goes? It was composed the year I was born when she was only twenty. Wow. Forty-two years have come and gone. And these last nine years have flown themselves. The last four months especially. Did she ever get those lyrics right! They make me smile and tear up at the same time. But then, the Autumn, as it approaches this coming week, always makes me do that. It's my favourite time of year. And I cling to one, specific lyric that strengthens the journey I'm making and my own resolve: I have no fear of time.

Across the purple sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come you storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

Music: Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Sandy Denny

Fireworks

Here’s what I’ve learned:
Things don’t always go as planned.

You dream of a homebirth. Of candles. Of soft music. The presence of strong, empowering women helping you through this, your first labour.

You surround yourself with them: there’s your midwife, your twin sister as your birth partner (the kind of strong woman who’s been through two homebirths already herself), your mum is there in the picture you’re making and she’s smiling, anxious but beaming. You are lucky enough to have your massage therapist offer to attend just for the experience of helping a woman through labour. You have four goddesses aiding you, touching you, whispering their love and encouragement while you descend into your belly and what lies there...

These beautiful faces surround you and walk you from room to room. They help you breathe through contractions that begin to grow closer together. That begin to grow more intense.

And then your water breaks and there’s meconium in it.
Here’s where things change from this pretty picture you’ve made…

There is zero hesitation on your part to transfer to hospital. Zero. Absolutely zilch.

Your sister battles traffic like she’s Mcgyver. Your massage therapist helps you through the stages of 6 cm dilation weaving through Wellington county in the back seat of a Toyota Tercel. She takes a photo of the license plate of the asshole who refuses to let us pass as we speed to the hospital. You watch the clouds, biting your lip and try to count them as you breathe through the sensation of having your uterus squeezed through a wringer.

Your thoughts are only on this baby within you and the journey she or he is making with you. To you. And your thoughts turn to meconium. You try to repress those ones though. They’re not helping your current sitch.

I want to talk about bravery. Courage. I’ve never seen so much of it in such a small, beautiful package. You are now 7cm dilated and been labouring for 16 hours and the pushing reflex has begun a little too early and you’re being told not to push. Don’t push. DON'T push. Don’t fucking PUUUUUSSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

It seems so small. Negligible. Three tiny centimetres of dilation separate this baby from me and my arms. It’s then I realize I don’t have the energy or stamina to handle what’s coming ‘cause what is coming is the most intense phase of labour: TRANSITION. I cave to an epidural. Naturally pitocin follows. And then the heart rate of this little package inside me begins to slow. It fluctuates, drops, then stabilizes. They flip me over back and forth like I’m a dolphin to get it back to normal. I’m thinking about waves. About each contraction as a wave. As water. Approaching the shore and then sliding away from it.

And I’m thinking about you. Only you.

Your heart rate drops and I begin to hum “dream a little dream” and watch it stabilize. I’m talking to you the entire time. I am whispering to you while 10 people wander around me: my homebirth team, doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists. I’m oblivious to anyone in the room but you – yeah, you there in my belly. You are my entire focus. You are the only one that matters.

The doctor suggests forceps and I just want to end the stress on my baby. To no longer have this little heart rate drop. Come out to me baby. Come out to my arms. The doc pulls and I push. I PUUUUSSSSSSSSHHHH.

My sister gives me the running commentary like she’s Ron Maclean: There’s the HEAD!!! The HEAD is OUT!!! Here comes the shoulder. Now the other shoulder...

And here’s where I give my final push and the absolute love of my life slithers from between my legs. They’re holding you upside down because of the meconium scare. The first thing I see is that you are a boy.

I have just given birth to my son. People are talking all around. I can’t hear them. My son. My son. My son. I have a son. I have a boy. A son. He’s mine. He’s all mine.

I have to wait to hold you. They suction your trachea and give me five minutes with you skin to skin. You are almost 10 minutes old when they place you against my breast.

So THIS is what Joy feels like. Shit, I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t realize it was THIS all-encompassing. I feel humbled. Blown away. Breathless. I feel exhilarated and frightened. I remember this sensation while lost in the fog on the coast of the Dingle Peninsula 18 years ago. I feel a terrifying LOVE. Deeper than I’ve ever felt. WOW. Wowowowowowow. A terrible beauty is born....

We spend almost a week in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the local hospital. I move through this week sleep-deprived, like a zombie. Everything I do, say, breathe is done for you. I make pacts with gods I didn’t know I believed in. I double pinky promise everything so you’ll be okay. We are surrounded by preemies barely clinging to life, screaming their lungs out and you and I cling to each other like rafts in this ocean we're swimming right now. I feel lucky. You are full term. I feel so luckyluckylucky. I repeat it like this refrain is a bouy to embrace in this lake of doubt, confusion, fear. The boy in my arms. I listen to conflicting opinions as to what constitutes progress and I nearly go insane wondering which one will be the one that releases us to just go home. Just you and me. Home together. Safe. Away from all this. Away from these leads on your body. Away from this monitor. Away from that IV tube in your tiny, fragile head. Away from that damned nasogastric tube stuck down your tiny little nose that everyone says is my nose.



          So yeah. Let me talk about bravery. Courage in the form of a 7 pound, 13 ounce little boy. You move through it all with wonder. With quiet strength. With this stoic expression. With rarely a cry from your beautiful, pursed lips. You have a cowlick swirl on the top of your head reminiscent of Vincent’s “Starry Night” and I think back to that meteor shower that sent you flying through the night sky to me. The peak night of the Perseids last August. The night I began to bleed the cycle that would bring you to me. The night I sat out on my muskoka in the backyard and wished on about a million shooting stars that I could gaze into the dark pools that look up into mine now.

Last night was Victoria Day. I sit on the fourth floor by the hospital window in the dark with you sucking at my breast and the night sky is lighting up again. I can hear the boom of fireworks in the distance. But see, I get confused. ‘Cause I can't tell if they are shooting off inside me. In the core of my heart as I hold you instead of simply showering over Victoria Park a few blocks away. I’m banking on the first scenario.

It was 11 years ago today that I lost my first baby via miscarriage and, as we are finally released from hospital, I step across the threshold of my farmhouse tonight holding you, my son, in my arms and I look back at this journey I’ve made. The journey of 11 years. The journey of 9 months. The journey of a 21 hour labour. The journey of the last week. Your beautiful, devoted, selfless aunt drives us home through the country and I feel like I’ve been gone forever. The world looks different. Everything is so green. Was it this green last week? Was the sunset this beautiful? Were the clouds this white and fluffy and perfect? I don’t think so.

The world has changed. My world feels as new as yours.

I look at you now lying in your bassinette. You are swaddled and cozy. Three little owls, your spirit siblings, the ones I lost before you, float over where you sleep and keep a watchful eye. We are home. It’s just you and me now. BOOM. Those fireworks are still exploding in my heart.

Goddamn I love you. My starry, starry knight.


Photography: Courtesy of my twin sister
Music: Starry, Starry Night, Don Maclean

Nesting

She came back to her nest today. Her mate was with her. (I envied her that.) I was heading out the side door on my way to prenatal class and they both flew over my head to the maple tree until I was gone. My due date is exactly one month away. Tears fill my eyes to see her finally. Last spring, she had five little robins. They all lived. I’d climbed a ladder to take a peek and my shadow made their little heads pop up and their beaks open, expecting food.

It was July when she returned to nest a second time. She hasn’t done that every year, but last year she did. She laid only two eggs then. One I’d found by the beginning of August on the stones, broken into bits in front of the door. The other remained in the nest, blue and perfect, though clearly not alive since she’d abandoned the nest altogether. I took the remaining egg indoors. This was around the time I began injecting my belly with infertility drugs. That robin egg became my little talisman. It sits on an antique hutch in another abandoned nest I’d found on the driveway. Neither of her two eggs survived, but when I look back now, what happened proved so ominous. In Celtic mythology, birds act as messengers. One egg had broken and the other had remained whole. This happened the month before I conceived twins through IVF. By the 12th week ultrasound, I would lose one baby. One baby would remain intact. So I have a thing about this robin. I feel a strange bond with her. It’s so good to see her back nesting again while I prepare my own. We are in synch.

I love that her nest sits on the beam outside the room that you and I will share; the room where I intend to birth you. When she’s nested the last four years in this same spot above my side door, she flies over my head each morning I leave my old farmhouse. She’s been kind enough never to shit on my head while doing this. It’s a brief flit to the maple tree and then back to the nest once I’m in my car. Eventually, by the end of each spring, she gets used to me and flies a shorter distance to the post sometimes, secure in the knowledge that I will leave her and her eggs alone. I gain her trust gradually.

The Weepies sing as I write this. I am thinking about the peak night of the Perseids last August. All those falling stars as I sent prayers up to the heavens for you. My body is wide to hold all the promise of blue-velvet dark and stars. You are that promise. In a month, perhaps less, but no more than 6 weeks from now, I will finally be holding you in my arms. My soul will weep and sing at the sight of you being pulled from between my legs. My heart will burst like fireworks all over the bloodied sheets beside this window below her nest. You will take your first breath and take away mine. The pulse of the cord will slow as your heart beats on its own and mine skips. I will be gazing into your eyes in disbelief, awe, gratitude, Unconditional Love, as you suck at my own red breast. I swear I’ll try to prevent tears falling from my dark lashes upon your sweet little face, your own dark locks, but I can’t make any promises, kay?

Here’s one promise I will keep: when those little robins break open from their greenish-blue eggs, I will swaddle you and climb two steps on my ladder when you are a month or so old and I’ll hold you up so our shadows will prompt their tiny, feathery heads to pop up and they will each open their mouths to sing you a proper welcome, my baby, to the planet.

For now, Mama Robin and I prepare our nests. We clean the dirt out. We put fresh straw and twigs in. We sing. We begin to hunker down. We watch the sky for falling stars. We count the days. And we await patiently the Joy that flies toward us…

Maternity Photography: Mattitude Photography

Music: Stars, The Weepies

Snowflake

The sky was so grey this morning. Then came the first, real downpour this spring; sounded like an army of watery soldiers marching across my tin roof. I paused, transfixed amidst the disarray of the studio space under renovation, imagining the crib against the wall, listening. The deluge made me want to strip my clothes off, layer by layer, and go stand in it so my skin could recall the last time it was touched.

Just now the sun came out and it was the first time baby moved inside me all day. I was watering my plants as the last of the snow melts outside my side door. The windows needed this cleansing. I moved closer to the pane, wondering when the robin will return to where she’s nested above my side door these last four years.

Looking through the glass sparked a flashback to that second night I stayed with you last December. Remember the size of the snowflakes? Like golfballs drifting down. I’d had a bath in the early evening and was lying with my feet up on your sofa, my iPod echoing in the semi-darkness, when you returned to the apartment. The first thing you did was cross the room to open the blinds. You called me over to the window then and we stood looking up to the sky and onto the street, following their descent amidst the traffic. Your hands were deep in your pockets and my heart was high in my throat. They were so goddamn breathtaking and, recalling another wintry night far in the past, I fought a sudden rise of tears, my eyelashes blinking them back.

The snowflakes looked solid, they were that big. Their size made them appear heavy, less fragile somehow yet impossibly floating with their weight, so quietly and softly. It was like we were standing in this gigantic snowglobe: a souvenir from Vancouver. And that’s just how my heart felt. As though it had been inverted (like a silver claddagh), turned upside down and shaken into a million ice crystals dancing all around us. For sure it was falling as gently, silently, steadily as those flakes; the tiny hairs on my neck rising, anticipatory, timorously reaching out to the close proximity of your t-shirt, the skin of your arms, as I stood nervous and speechless, my mouth a little dry.

Did you know that snowflakes aren’t even white? They’re clear. Just the light, the way it hits ‘em, gets diffused by the hollows within the crystal. People talk about how perfect a snowflake is but actually its flaws cause the light to shine white and sparkle like a diamond. Its incalculable, tiny, crystalline imperfections enhance its beauty. The things I imagine doing with you, to you, are as innumerable and varied.

And it's this reverie that causes my fingers to ache with the memory of the silken smoothness of your back as they slide down the cold glass of my door, still a touch of this past winter clinging there. Hiccups begin in my pelvis. It's not a euphemism. But it feels like a little heartbeat down there, reverberating with the rhythm of your own fingers' caresses. I look at my hands. How many weeks before they draw this little one to my breast now, the pulse of the umbilical cord slowing before it's cut: less than I can count on these fingers against the pane, guaranteed. Seven weeks? Five? Eight, maybe? I remember how baby kicked when you warmed my feet with yours under the sheets that night. You don’t have to talk to me about water and longing. ‘Cause lately I feel like crystallized H₂O, like one of those snowflakes we witnessed the second-last day of December: floating around in space, not knowing exactly where I’ll land with the delicacy of all my womb carries, the frailty of my heart. I feel a little afraid of the heat of your breath fogging the window, emanating from your skin as I drift down through the sky. The stars, where I began this journey, seem so far away up above...

I wish to gather the courage to say just how I feel:
‘Cause I really don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to melt away.
Unless it’s on your bottom lip. Your tongue.
What I want is for you to come outside onto the street and open your mouth along with your heart. Open wide, ‘kay? And catch me.

Catch the one-of-a-kind, hexagonal symmetry of this love and swallow its perfection, its imperfections whole, so its light can diffuse, dispel the dark places and shine again from within…

Music: Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol;
I Remember (December), Lisa Hannigan and Damien Rice

Dream a Little Dream

Today I am finished my 7th month of pregnancy. Yesterday I stepped inside a baby store for the first time this entire pregnancy. Not just any old store that happens to sell stuff for babies along with everything else it carries, but an actual store with the sole focus of selling all things baby-related. Over the years, I can count on two fingers the number of times I have done this. In general, I have avoided these places. It was just too damn difficult to walk around in them and think that perhaps I’d never be buying anything for a child of my own.

Maybe it was the two days of sunshine in a row after such a long, cold winter but yesterday marked the day where I felt I could start to accept that my dream is finally coming true. I looked at cribs. I looked at bassinettes. I looked at strollers and baby monitors. I looked at change tables and I even touched them. I opened drawers. Imagined my child lying in the crib. Pictured the delight of lifting my baby from out of it. My own baby, at last!

Over the years, I have knit gifts for baby showers I have had to attend. I do believe homemade gifts to be the nicest. But the selfish excuse attached to this is the fact that I was loathe to enter these baby-focused stores for the regular type of gifts people purchase. The one or two attempts I made to do so had me leave the lineup, put the items back and get the hell out – it was just too much of a challenge to my courage to watch pregnant women walk around with their spouses, so excited about choosing crib bedding, to have to listen to the chatter waiting to cash out, each of them asking the others when they were due, was it their first child? To have to bite my lip listening to those women who would actually complain about all they’ve had to endure or how bored they are with the pregnancy and wishing it were over by now. During the span of six years between my two miscarriages, there were 16 babies born to either my immediate family members or close friends that lived within a half hour of me. Some on their second or third children by the time I was finally pregnant for the second time only to lose that baby at 8 weeks. Attending the showers was my singular act of sacrifice because of the love I felt towards these sisters and girlfriends themselves, but I resolved not to enter these stores again to save my life. I simply could not bring myself to do it.

Yet here I am, finally. I actually purchased some burping cloths. I bought little words made of twigs to hang in my baby’s room. The words speak as much to me as I hope they will to my child. Dream. Laugh. And Shh (for over the crib). I am allowing myself to believe, to accept this is finally happening. To ME. It has felt such a long journey and I realize I have been holding my breath, not really permitting myself to believe it is coming true even after I’d reached my second trimester for the first time.

My mum has kept asking me when I’m going to start knitting for my own baby. All those little baby clothes I’ve knit over the years for gifts for other people’s Bundles of Joy. I know I’m surprised, too, that I have not begun this for myself and my own child. So I go up to the closet where I've stored tiny balls of yarn for the baby blanket I’d planned six years ago now. I bought them when I purchased other yarn for the same blanket I knit for my twin sister’s second son. I knit his first and planned to knit mine after. I was still pregnant the December he was born, but lost my baby in the weeks that followed his birth so I hid the small bag of yarn and the pattern away. Everything baby-related was tucked safely away from sight in storage.

And now I am 9 weeks away from my due date. I finally dig out the bags and boxes of these items I've kept hidden for years: the baby photograph frame my mother bought me almost 11 years ago when I was first pregnant, but which I’d packed away after I miscarried at 12 weeks. The little rust-coloured knit booties I purchased secretly in the Dingle Peninsula when my ex and I traveled to Ireland in the September of 1999, almost a decade ago, for the dream of a baby again someday. The little suede moccasin-type boots I bought in the village where I live maybe 8 years ago because they were so adorable and I still hoped that I would one day have a child of my own who would don them. The little knit hat I bought at the Danforth Music Hall the night I went to see Sam Beam (Iron and Wine) in October of 2007. His sister, Sarah, had knit it and there were a basket of her items at the front where you could purchase the vinyl albums and CDs. As I unpack each item, I feel finally that I am freeing a hidden burden of sorrows in my closet. In each their tiny way, these items represent the dreaming I have held for years of a child of my own.

They speak to me from my past and I can finally concede that my dreaming wasn’t actually in vain; that all the years I thought I had given up Hope (especially once I miscarried my second pregnancy), I actually hadn’t. A small ember of Hope kept burning somewhere deep inside me that refused to extinguish. It fanned itself into a flame again and I remember the specific moment this happened. I was sitting in a small room in the fertility clinic in Hamilton in June of 2008. The clinic at which I’d been a patient for almost five years, years with my ex-husband and then, on my own. The moment that ember burst into flame was when my doctor advised me not to go through with the In Vitro Fertilization surgery I was planning. He relayed to me that he felt it would be a waste of money as my chances seemed very remote. I replied that I had to do it anyway – for my own self, for my soul, my spirit, even if it was only for some kind of closure. His words could have stamped out that ember once and for all, but they had the opposite effect. By refusing to listen to his advice, I had opened the wrought iron woodstove door on my heart and blew that tiny ember into the flame that has been burning since last August when I initiated this entire journey on my own. Be careful how close you come near me now. That fragile flame of last June has blazed into a virtual bonfire over the last 7 months beneath my right breast, my belly has become its own oven baking this bun, the warmth of which consumes my entire being.

I am two months, perhaps less than that, away from holding my baby in my arms at last. I am 42 years old. I am single. I am going to finally realize my dream of being a mum.

I am over the moon.

I admit now nothing is impossible. Dreams can come true. What seems unimaginable CAN manifest. These thoughts are a little dangerous to me these days because the flames begin to lick at other areas of my life. But I remain afraid to push my luck, really. I am feeling pretty damn blessed right now that at least this one dream of a child is coming true and I feel too afraid to dare to hope that other dreams harbored in my heart might also be fanned into flame. So I am closing the wrought iron door. I’m stepping back. I don’t want to look a gifthorse in the mouth. This is enough of a blessing for me right now. I’m afraid to get burned if I make an attempt for even more Happiness than is now growing in my belly… don’t want to jinx myself.

I will just focus on this new little love of mine coming to my arms and not be greedy for other dreams to also come true. This is a big one and, when I look at other people’s lives, at so many other women I know who’ve dreamed of it themselves but have been denied, I feel more than lucky and that Life has been more than good to me.

I know when I look into his or her eyes, the Joy I will finally know will ease my heart where any other dreaming is concerned…God, I hope so. I cannot ask for more than this blessing right now in my Life…this is a helluva massive dream to manifest already.

My baby, I cannot wait to meet you. To embrace you.

I will hold you so tight and snug to me, all the more closely that it might help me let go of other dreams held within my heart. Someone once wrote me a special note about the struggle of letting go, of the kind of cry that is loneliness mixed with feelings of wanting to be alone. When you are born, I hope and pray your little eyes, your hands, your tiny feet, your giant heart will help pull me through this struggle of letting go and just be thankful for the Joy I am already blessed to feel.

Until then, kneeling amongst these little boots and balls of yarn, books and bonnets, in the sunlight of what promises to be a week long warm spell to properly welcome the Vernal Equinox on March 20 next Friday, the official beginning of Spring, I whisper a little tune that, ironically (or maybe not so ironically) was recorded by The Mamas and the Papas, as I journey through this final stage of becoming a mama myself. A song of night breezes and sunbeams and leaving worries behind…a song of stars shining brightly above. In a sad way, it’s a song of farewell, but in a happier way, it’s more than just that: it’s a song of Love. I sing it to you, my baby, as a kind of first lullaby. I sing it to my heart. I sing it as an ode to soft skin, to wolf eyes, to the aurora borealis and to the magic of cold, starry, wintry nights. To the leaping of years and of hearts. To the courage of risk leaps represent. To love that holds the depth of mermaid-ridden oceans and the majesty, power and strength of horses.

Tears of sorrow, of longing mix with those of joy, slide over my freckles as to My Soul, I sing it…

Stars shining bright above you
night breezes seem to whisper
I love you
Birds singin' in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me.

Say "nighty night" and kiss me
just hold me tight and tell me
you'll miss me.
While I'm alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me.

Stars fading
but I linger on dear
still craving your kiss
I'm longing to linger til dawn dear
Just saying this:

Sweet dreams til sun beams find you
sweet dreams that leave your worries behind you.
But in your dreams
whatever they be,
dream a little dream of me

Maternity Photography: Mattitude Photography
Music: Dream a Little Dream of Me, Ukelele Cover of The Mamas & the Papas

Things that Go Bump in the Night...

The morning of Thursday, December 18, I think I feel you for the first time. I am sat on my toilet looking out at the snow and the trees. My midwife told me it might feel like gas, but I sense the little bubble that has burst in the lower part of my belly is not indigestion. It feels different somehow. I sit in wonder, waiting for more reassurance. Instead, I must shower and get ready for work.

It is called the quickening. I wonder why? I feel as though I've been waiting all my life to experience this amazing sensation! Sheila Kitzinger writes in Rediscovering Birth, that, "'Quick' is old English for 'alive'" and that, "in all cultures, quickening is recognised as an important transition in the process of becoming a mother."

Saturday morning. December 20. Tomorrow is Yule or Winter Solstice and tonight I am hosting a Solstice Soiree at my home. I have an insurmountable list of things to accomplish, but I lie in bed because the bubble I felt on Thursday begins to burst more than once. This time, I am sure it is you. My heart swells and my eyes fill. I am dialing my sister's number to tell her. Everything I do that day in preparation for the celebration of the Solstice is coloured by the fact that you have finally made your very real presence known to me. The grocery aisle is as exciting as a rollercoaster ride. I lower the window on the way to the Blackberry Bog so the wintry air can bloom roses on my cheeks. I touch the Scotch pine to thank it for being my yule tree before the man who sells it to me starts to chop it down. The strong scent of its needles inside my car fills my nostrils and I breathe deeply, my soul singing in elation of this day. Talk about a tiny light beginning to grow the longest night of the year!

Two weeks have passed since first contact and now daily, I feel your little bumps and grinds inside my womb. You are growing bigger with each day. When I lie down at night, you become most active. You push and press and kick and tumble. Each time you say hello in this way, my spirit soars.

I feel as though my very heart has fallen into my belly and is floating around inside there, banging against my womb walls to redefine Joy for me. You are my heart bursting and bubbling and blooming inside this tummy. I cannot wait to hold you, to kiss you, to press you to my breast, to smell your hair, to whisper to you, to touch you and to love you unconditionally forever.

In five months, I will look into your eyes. I will nuzzle your tiny neck and kiss your delicate fingers, your button nose. For now, your kicks keep my heart skipping a beat. Goddamn, I love you, my little star. You are all I am living and breathing for. You are whom I've been waiting for all my life. It won't be long now. At 22 weeks, I am more than halfway there. This has been one long journey and you feel closer than ever with each kick. I don't need to sleep to feel I am dreaming, that this long dream I've dreamt is finally coming true, finally manifesting. What a happy new year 2009 is for me!

The happiest I've yet known...but then again, wait until next year ;) HA!

Maternity Photography: Mattitude Photography

Music: In the Still of the Night, Cole Porter

Margaret Dumont and the Magic Handkerchief

So it's been snowing on and off the last few weeks and today I was sitting in the little cafe at the back of the General Store staring out the window at The World's Smallest Art Gallery. Basically it's someone's beatup, old station wagon and every month in the summertime there is a different art installation in the car. You can get in and sit behind the wheel and read about the artist and what the installation means or ponder what you think it might mean. You can wander around the car and you can peek through the windows. Sometimes the installation extends to the outside of the car. It's a pretty cool idea started by some artistic folk who refer to themselves as The Village Idiots. I love that that's their moniker. It makes me feel like I actually belong here. It makes me feel not so weird at times. Or at least that my weirdness is no weirder than that which could perhaps be exhibited by any other person wandering around my village.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the due date of my first pregnancy. Weird to think I could have had a 10-year old running around by now if I hadn't miscarried. I try to picture him/her. I love and mourn the idea simultaneously, but I know this year, for the first time in a decade, this anniversary doesn't feel so sorrow-filled. I am finally carrying a baby again this anniversary and I am almost at 17 weeks. In a week or two or three, I will feel the "quickening". My midwife says I might think it's gas. My mum says it'll feel like a bird. Lesley, one of my best girlfriends ever, says, "it's like a butterfly's wings floating across your tummy". In four or five weeks, I will be SURE it's a kick happening and it won't remain as subtle. I cannot wait for this kind of daily reassurance. I know I will breathe a little easier and feel like this is actually happening to me and that's it's for real this time.

I was pondering all this in the cafe as the snow was falling and when I glanced outside, sipping my chai latte, I wished I'd brought my camera 'cause I suddenly wanted to take a photo of this statue which stands almost right beside The World's Smallest Art Gallery. The statue is commonly referred to as "the Tall Guy" around town. The name of the sculpture is actually It's a Question of Who's in Charge. See, the Tall Guy is slightly bent over as though he has a calcium deficiency and he points down and he's pretty tall so if you were to stand below him, right below that pointing finger, you'd feel for sure like he was the one in charge. No question. The thing is, I've passed this sculpture a gazillion times already. But the reason I wanted to take a picture of it today was 'cause there was a pile of snow piled on his back and neck as he was stooping over to point downwards. And it made me want to get a broom and sweep off that mound of snow that was burdening him. I imagined, as I sat there sipping, the act of brushing the broom across his shoulders and that somehow this small gesture would allow him to un-hunch his shoulders, stretch and stand up straight. Yeah. I'm about to turn 42 in a month or so and I still have these weird, little fantasies/visions/thoughts. Somedays I feel like such a freak, but it makes me laugh too hard to honestly ever worry about it.

I was such a bizarre kid. I was an oddball. Mainly due to an unorthodox sense of humour even from a very young age. The kind of humour not everyone "gets" and sometimes the kind of humour that isn't even funny and is just plain weird, but is, let me tell you, pretty goddamn hilarious to me. It's not malicious or cruel or anything, or even sarcastic-trying-to-be-witty. It's just 'weird'. I'm the looney lass who laughs out loud at a part of the movie that no one else finds funny. Yeah, THAT girl. The kind that drives people who paid good money for popcorn and soda crazy.

My mum is my best straight man. My twin sister always tries to not react, but can't help eventually losing it and giggling at me. My mum, though: she is the Margaret Dumont to my Groucho Marx. I can say (have said) the craziest shit right to her face and she's all, "that's nice, dear." And it's not that she hasn't heard me, you understand — just that her replies to my increasing wackiness over the years are simply her way of being hilarious back. She secretly loves being my straight man, all stoic when the crazy one-liners let fly from my lips. It's why we get along so damn well. Right now I'm reading A Complicated Kindness and man, do Nomi and Trudie ever remind me of me and my mum. Of course, Tash reminds me of me, too. So does Ray, really. But Nomi most of all. Trudie is how I like to imagine myself as a mum to the possible Nomi I may be currently carrying in my womb. I hope to fuck I'm not carrying The Mouth. Boy would that be ironic. A kid whose mum was so wacko, the only way to be rebel was to become some ultra-conservative religious zealot. I best watch myself and tone it down for the first while to ward such a frightening possibility off. I am loving this book, though. It wasn't until I got to page 103 that I realized Nomi had already been compared to Holden Caulfield on the inside of the front cover by the New Brunswick Reader instead of just inside my wiggy head. I giggled and whispered, "no shit" to myself. I was in the bathtub, the place where I always inevitably start talking to myself aloud. I love how my voice echoes over the water.

Anyhow, I started thinking about my baby sitting in the cafe. Is it wrong to hope your kid turns out to be a geeky nerd? To relish the idea? It's not that I'll be hugely disappointed if she or he is "normal" (by whatever societal stereotypical standards continue or are in place by then) or even "popular" or what have you. Just I've always had a soft spot for the goofy types. They remind me so much of myself when I was that age. They remind me so much of myself right NOW at 41. I am drawn to corny jokes, bad puns, braces, thick glasses. I never had braces or thick glasses, but I sincerely didn't need them to be as nerdy as I recall being (and, let's be frank, continue to be).

A few years back, when I actually watched television, there was this commercial I loved. My ex and I used to mute all the ads like they were a plague to be perpetually shunned. But I'd always unmute this particular one. It was actually a commercial against advertising that targeted kids and it featured all these kids being true to themselves: being what they wanted to be, doing what they wanted to do without worrying about peer pressure and stuff. One kid boards a bus with his tuba. Another kid tapdances up a storm. But there was this one boy who gets shown a number of times. He is an aspiring magician. In one scene he saws his little sister in half and near the end of this commercial, he pushes his thick glasses further up his nose before pulling out this magic handkerchief and giving it an honest-to-god flourish. I would wait with baited breath for this, my favourite moment, and release an audible sigh, beaming the happiest of smiles. My ex knew that I absolutely ADORED this kid for no good reason he could understand and he'd always tease me by calling this kid "dork" or "loser" or something every time the commercial came on. I knew he was just trying to make me laugh or react, but I also know he could never understand why my heart was always fit-to-burst whenever I saw that kid wave that hanky around. This little magician was definitely the type of kid that would have been pounced upon on his walk home; the kind who'd have his lunch money stolen from him. Maybe that's why he wanted to perform magic so bad: to make any potential (or very real) bullies disappear. Or maybe just make himself invisible...

The thing is, I kinda went out of my way to befriend every kid in school whether their parents had a pool or just a clothesline and dogshit in their backyard. I didn't exactly have the apparent talent or capacity for differentiation. Yes, I recognized there were cliques, but I didn't ascribe to any of them. It was like Groucho Marx refusing to belong to any club who would have him as a member; only kinda more like the opposite. I decided to convince myself I belonged to every group in some tiny way. I think this was one of the major inspirations for me to develop my predilection for acting and its chameleon-like nature. I don't mean being fairweather or fake. I just mean, I could blend easily with kids of all shapes, sizes and situations and always felt comfortable alongside any defined "clique" or non-clique. The kids who were "dorky" liked me, but they still couldn't understand why exactly I would befriend the guy who bullied them. For instance, there was one guy in grade 8 when I was in grade 7. We were in a split grade together and nobody talked to him and it was widely known that he had been caught carrying a knife to school and shit. Everyone was scared of him and when we'd have group activities, people didn't want him in their group. I remember one day we were all tie-dying tshirts as a school project in the courtyard and we had different buckets of various coloured dyes and were wrapping about a million rubber bands around random spots on the white tshirts we'd brought to school and stirring them in these pots and I remember him being off to the side, alone, trying to act too cool for words and there was something about that kid. I used to always go up to him and say, "hey" and he always looked shocked that I wasn't terrified to speak to him, like he wanted to come across all tough and shit. But then he'd just say, "hey" back and we'd talk about regular stuff. One thing I couldn't stand when I was growing up was watching someone be alienated or left out.

I think the best thing was that I kinda knew how dorky I was, but here was the clincher: I still didn't care and to this day it still doesn't bother me. I think it's one of the best feelings in the world. And I hope if my kid is dorky, or even if she or he is "cool" (however society will define that by the time he or she hits gradeschool), that she or he will be smarter than to be wooed into some exclusionary kind of clique or try to fit in and become like some unoriginal sheep in a massive flock. I pray all my children will be always true to the individuals they are. I dream of them protecting everyone around them from alienation, humiliation and loneliness, whether bullies or bullied. I dream they will be protected in turn.

And I hope when they turn 42, they can still get melancholy picturing leaves falling in the Autumn as though they're tears the trees are crying or that they will sing Happy Birthday out loud in some over-the-top way to their coworkers or that they will wear curlers in their hair at the Tim Horton's drive-thru on the way to work in the morning to give the ladies behind the counter a laugh. Well, maybe only if they're female. Okay, male, female, whatever. Really what I mean is that I hope they never lose their imagination, their fascination with the world around them, their celebration of individuality or their capacity not to let the opinions of others wear them down, inhibit or intimidate them from being true to themselves to the best of their abilities. And to always have the ability to laugh at themselves, without the inclination to laugh at the expense of others.

I hope they never lose touch with the innocence of being a child.

Hear that, baby? You can be wacko just like you're mummy if you want to be, flourishing your hanky all around the town, or you can take after your Wee Irish Nana and become my Margaret Dumont, rolling your exquisite eyes at my kooky behaviour with a cardboard expression. Either way, you'll always be the apple of my eye.

Music: You're Innocent When You Dream, Tom Waits