7 a.m.

He breathes in the day at the same time I do. The new air floating down as the white sun stretches up.

I breathe deeper and he swims, somersaults, to a rhythm of his own making. A long stretch here, a graceful bounce there. 

And I feel his every movement in a way unlike anything I’ve felt before. His dance is part of me, yet already so much his own. 

I whisper a lullaby as the half-light of sunrise penetrates the blinds. My belly ripples in response like a gentle wave at sea.

And together, my son and I, we greet the day and each other before the world wakes up and interrupts.

Energized each 7 a.m. by a sacred morning routine. 

Spring in my soul and my womb

Even though the trees are still skeletons and a few clumps of dirty snow are still clinging to yellow lawns, I walked outside and breathed in spring today.  I let it envelop and cleanse and massage my soul until I felt so renewed I could climb Provo’s tallest tree.  My baby woke up inside me and I wondered if he felt it too. The new life of spring, flowing through and around me and washing away the bitter sleepiness of winter. 

But for my baby, I realized, it’s always been spring.  He experiences the rush of new life every day; in every moment he rediscovers his nose or feels the gentle pulse of his newly formed heart. He feels spring in each new taste that reaches his tiny tongue, in the slow recognition of our voices and in the rhythmic cadence of a muffled story.  Spring is his ability to somersault and dance in his tiny, fluid world; to feel his new limbs growing and moving and realizing, piece by piece, that he’s him. 

And when he’s born in the heat of summer and he leaves the tiny world where his heart first started beating, it will still be spring.  The feeling of the sunshine on his baby cheeks will be new and perfect; so will the chirp of a bird or the vastness of the sky. There will be two new faces to match the voices he could only hear in the world he left behind.  There will be new tastes and the new sensation of day and night.  It will continue to be spring even into the fall, because every new baby is Spring. Winter is something that only happens when we stop discovering. 

Spring has lived inside me since the long winter outside my window began, but I failed to recognize it until today. I failed to tap into the wisdom of an unborn baby. 

Tomorrow it may snow.  But I’m going to keep breathing in spring.