The Best Year

 On the first day of this year we knew enough of you to dream of you, knew enough of you to buy tiny socks, start a list of names

The spring went slow, tears, and the world contracted and grew small while some strange disease crept in, and still you grew, and I did the same

Summer was hot and you were active, resting only when I walked, and so I walked and walked and walked, and wondered what it would be like to walk with you

You were born fighting a battle we couldn't see, life wrapped 'round your neck three times, I've never been able to think long on that, I hope you'll forgive my inability to imagine life without you

Since you joined us the world caught fire, more disease, more fear, more worry for what the future will bring

But hope, too. And green grass to lay you down in, tiny toes with tiny toenails flexed to feel the tickle, wind to cross your cheek as you swing

So few have held you. We've had to tell you of their love, promise that they smile behind each mask, that they pray to God and saints on your behalf, that there are hugs to look forward to.

It has been a year of weeping, of exhaustion, of loneliness.  But it has been the best of all things, too, the deepest of all joys, the wildest of all loves. It has been milk and sweat, the weight of you in my arms, the perfect curve of your smile. It has been the best year, this year of you. 

Fragile

I have rarely lacked confidence in my ability to get things done. I have a healthy stockpile of self-doubts, but my ability to act and decide and plan and put plans in motion is not one. This has served me well in many contexts. It has made me a good lawyer, a good provider, a good payer-of-debts. It has helped me help others and fix problems big and small.  I am a developer of Plans of Attack and a checker of all the boxes. But pregnancy in a pandemic has shattered everything.

I know from experience that pregnancy, every pregnancy, feels disorienting.  On Monday your body is your own.  On Tuesday it is shared sacred space. We've been here before. Twice before. And while those pregnancies ended, they were long enough to disrupt what I could and could not believe about my body.  They were long enough to love someone and lose someone. They were long enough to love and hate what was in the mirror. They were long enough to be surprised by how resilient our flesh can be, suffer and still wake up whole, suffer and still wake up and go to work, suffer and still go to happy hour, suffer and still hope.

After losses, pregnancy feels especially tenuous. My only experience of pregnancy thus far has been destruction and loss, so to be in this new world of good news, healthy ultrasounds, kicks and somersaults after supper, feels beautiful and fragile. To know he's a boy, growing into a boy body, with boy elbows and knees in my stomach, means there's so much more to imagine and cherish, so many daydreams of dirt and baseball and laughter and boat rides, so much more to be lost. He is pictured, not more loved than his lost siblings, but certainly more concrete. He is possible and probable, and that makes the risks loom larger.

But he is an anchor now, too. We cannot drift too deeply into any sea of despair because there are bassinets to research, child care options to discuss.  There are nurseries to daydream and names to debate. We may be isolated, a bit stuck, and bruised by the disappointments and fears of this current storm, but we are constantly reminded by a tiny person we love that the future must come, too. And he doesn't care if Mom doesn't have baby showers, or if the new house isn't quite put together, or if he even has a "new" house to come home to in the first place. He'll just be here. We love him for just being here, just existing. And that love is not fragile, it is fierce.