Postcard to a pregnant friend

(written for Nora)

if i knew where my box of cards was, this would be a postcard, meant to be found in your mailbox after a walk through the sun-speckled greenleafed ruts of your lovely driveway. but, alas, i’ve got no inclination to go digging through the boxes looking for my postcards.

sunny friday in seattle…
i set my trays of vegetable garden starts out on the porch and spent a few hours sitting out in the sun with my shirt hitched up over my belly, reading a magazine Ryan bought me for mother’s day (World Pulse, lovely!) and eating my granola, sipping my 1 small cup coffee indulgence and stocking up on my vitamin D …

trying to get through a read/editorial survey of a book manuscript I’m doing pro bono for a friend.  My freelance career is a parade of unpaid projects lately, but i guess i can hope that somehow, they will all manifest in paid work this fall, with a little more gumption from me and the help and goodwill of the friends to whom i’ve lent my unpaid skills.

the dog is sleeping the day away, unwilling to meet the sunshine, and every now and then i hear her throw her body off the bed or couch and snap her jaws at the big black fly buzzing around the house. she always misses, but its hilarious and endearing and unusual to see her move with such fierce determination, eyes bright and ears cocked… then lapse softly back into dog sleep.

find that in a hundred moments each day, as my movements slow and my motivation for various projects wanes and my attention turns inward, to the movements in that that tiny universe of my stretching belly, that I am thinking about you.

thinking about you in your dear simple house in the clearing to the south, watching the light move across your living room and listening to dear songs and napping on the couch, rolling out dough and watching your little one rippling under your belly, waiting for that Time when the next Big Thing Begins…

a hundred times a day, I tell you, dear girl, my mind is with you,
and in a way i never knew was possible

a way born of sharing this physical-emotional-whatever else journey, watching our bodies change and playing intimate witness to the emergent personhood of these small, as-of-yet un-met humans who’ve lived out their days floating in our cores, sharing this matter-of-fact and also completely mind-stretching experience of waiting for our lives to change beyond measure, and marking the places in ourselves and our relationships we know we must preserve….
i cried last night trying to get to sleep because Ryan’s out of town and we won’t sleep next to each other for a week and lately i can only settle into bed if i’m leaning against him with his hand on the belly… and suddenly I was mourning that our hours together, sleeping uninterupted, only Us in the world, are numbered… but numbered in a sweet way, a sweet way neither of us minds, a way we welcome. maybe it was just hormones needing to vent in tears,  maybe the saltwater balance in my body’s ocean just needed adjusting. who knows.
not sure if i was really sad or just moving with the tide of all this,

i thought of you again
took such immense comfort in knowing you, your calm and your smile and your grace and your similar awe and willingness to meet all this as it comes, without some Master Plan for hygenic scrapbook parenting… to laugh at it and cry with it and share it on those precious days when we find each other’s company and pass the hours in such dear, unhindered conversation, with snacks and trips in and out of doors…
how grateful i am,
how unspeakably grateful,
to know you
and love you
and be doing this together!

i guess this would have been a very crammed postcard.

can’t wait to meet your little one. so soon.

(p.s. thanks for letting me share this. xo.)