Just around the bend

Hello, and welcome to week 38 of my pregnancy! If I were currently gestating my first kid, I would have three days left until delivery day. And if this were my second kid, I’d have 19. But it’s not my first kid, or my second. It’s my third. And he has his own agenda, will be pulling in to the station on his own baby train schedule. Sometimes I wish there were a giant billboard that held all the arrival times, so we’d know when it was time to hold up our signs with names big and bold so the ones we await would know right away how to recognize us.

But mostly though, I find myself in a place of patient watchfulness. Ready to be relieved of my discomfort (or as my grandmother put it, to “lay this burden down”), but keenly aware that I won’t ever get to be here again, in this place of swollen anticipation, eager to put a face to a name that I’ve carried around in secret for weeks. There will be no more pregnancies for me, no more tiny heartbeats to find with a wand on a black and white screen, grainy and wonderous. And rightfully so—that phase has passed and I am ready to move on to a different place in my life, grateful for the bodies that surround me, sure of the fact that we are all here now. (Or almost here, anyway.)

I am glad to be to be right where I am. Aching back, snail’s pace, bulbous nose and all. I want to sit very still and let my ripeness wash over me so I can conjure it up years from now when time has moved me far past the feeling of feet pressing steady and persistent on the underside of my ribs. I want to document the silvery streaks on my skin, the round silhouette that shadows the ground, the rippling waves of an internal force that rolls and moves and makes me catch my breath. All of these things are worth remembering.

Good things are coming. And so much goodness is already right here. So I surround myself with it, grateful, as I await the sound of a train’s whistle in the distance.