adoptive moms wait

holding that {birth} space for each other

April 21, 2015

I hear from a sweet girlfriend she is in labor. I’m at home. I sling the baby on my hips and go upstairs. The older kids clamor what kind of baby will she have? is she going to want a chocolate cake? while following me up the stairs that creak, down the hallway that’s dark, and into the Sitting Room, my work studio. I scan the room in a hurry and blink, in that second recalling the memory of where I safely stowed the matches out of their reach. In a few steps, I recover the matches and light one. The baby tries hard to burn his hands but after setting him down to toddle, I cup the match and my favorite candle made by another sweet friend. Lit, it lets off the sweetest smell and the three kids huddle to watch it flick flack. I’m holding the space for this girlfriend in labor. A lit candle, powerful but vulnerable, makes the perfect analogy for the laboring mama. Her body can do this. It was made to do this. Her breath in & out brings that baby closer to her arms through his or her biggest journey of their life. Don’t you wish we could remember how it felt to kick off the top of the uterus? To head down from our warm cocoon into the bright cold world? Or to feel the surgeon’s rubbery hands lifting us to our mama’s welcoming eyes? Probably best those memories are in our bones and…

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