breaking waters

All around us, our friends’ waters are breaking and babies’ are birthing. A and I are both often in tears, moved by the stories’ complexity and simplicity, violence and beauty, and our friends’ vulnerability and strength. A’s likely contagious hormones are a good excuse for the loopy, revved up instability we feel. I think we’re both in this trip so deep that hearing about the finishing line is overwhelming to our normally balanced emotional states. For so many years our whole focus was achieving that double line on the pee stick, all parenting dreams aimed at that one small (read “giant”) detail. Ever since we’ve seen those impossibly clear lines, the scope keeps changing. We were so happy to get through the trepidation of the dangerous FIRST TRIMESTER. Then we were over the moon to get into the viable child-could-live-albeit-plugged-into-machines zone. We’re officially in the third trimester now as of Tuesday, and A is kept awake at night by the many physicalities but almost more so by thoughts of birth. She dreads it, and yet craves it. I’m not so sure where I stand. I am looking forward to meeting our small charge, and yet am thinking wistfully about those things that so far have kept me sane: quiet, space, time alone. And the freedom to be spontaneous. I want to go to the Bedouin Soundclash show tonight, but I know there is no hope of A joining me. I called to ask what time the actual band came on. 11pm!!?? The fellow on the phone very sweetly said, “You’ll be happy to know it’s not a late show. You should be out of there by 1pm”. Really? Thank you. Thank you for highlighting our shifting perception of reality, the muddied sea of identity confusion in which we swim. Our lives these days are like waves crashing against a rocky shore, moments of quiet tension and expectation (and sometimes peace) building to other moments of strong emotion: pain, shock, joy. I can only imagine what will happen when it’s our turn, when A’s living waters break all over our life and things get really interesting!

E