April showers

I’ve never felt so safe

As when we’re lying in bed

While the rain falls on our roof

And the dog sleeps at our feet

And we hold hands

while I drift softly in and out of dreams. 

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. 

Truancy

I got work off today because we were definitely going to go to Vegas.

No, really. I swear. We had big plans.  We were heading down there with some friends and we were gonna bask in the 120-degree weather and jump in a pool and see family and everything.

But then we changed our minds.

So the inner moral conflict I dealt with was thus: Should I keep the day off and ignore the workload waiting for me merely 15 minutes down the road while my coworkers spend the day making up for my absence? Or should I keep the day off that was promised me for no real reason whatsoever?

I decided to skip.

And then I totally felt like I did in ninth grade when my friend Tesha and I skipped gym class just to go to the playground across the street to play on the swings for an hour and talk about boys.  There were still girls outside in their gym clothes when we came back, so we tried to be stealthy by sort of awkwardly bending over as we ran right past them.  But everyone knew what we were up to.  And we both got after-school detention, and my mom had to come pick me up, and I was grounded for like three weeks during a crucial window of perfect spring hang-out weather.  But oh, was that playground time WORTH IT!

So when I felt like that I told myself, “Self.  You’re a grown-up now. You’re taking this day to get important things done, like finish the laundry and get the oil changed and catch up on imperative facebook correspondence.”

I was definitely going to do all that stuff.

But instead I went to the park and fed the ducks. They loved my bread.  And I wasn't even sorry.

This isn't even the duck I fed.  I forgot my camera card today so stole this duck from the Internets.

I’m still half waiting for the principal to call my house.

Connections

I saw him smelling the same roses I stopped to smell yesterday.  He even took a picture, just like I had. And then he was a person, not just the annoying neighbor who always steals our parking spot. 

Confessions of a Sprout Mommy

I need to get this out: I’m in love with my plant babies.  Evidence provided below (and in previous sentence, wherein I called them “plant babies”).

1. They’re basically all I talk about anymore. Example:  (Person): “What’s new with you guys?” (Me): “My garden is growing!  Things are coming out of the dirt!” (Person): “Cool.  Anything else?” (Me): “Beet sprouts are PURPLE!”
2. I sing to them sometimes. 
3. I check on them every half hour when I’m at home.  I swear that’s how long it takes for them to stretch their little leafy arms up a little further in an effort to give the sun a big hug.
4. I drew a picture of them.  I couldn’t help it.
5. I get excited when I see their little bums popping out of the dirt. “This one’s coming!” I call out to Kendon, then turn to my little sprout. “Come on, little guy, you’re almost there!” And I think it hears me. And I feel giddy.

Spring

This week I planted some seeds.

I tenderly tucked them into a bed of fresh, rich-smelling soil, humming a Simon and Garfunkel lullaby and giving them a bedtime drink. I strained my ears to hear them, perhaps whispering the foresty fairy tales of their grandfathers, or asking for more water, or kicking off the blankets.  I poked my head in to check on them hourly that day, hoping to see one of them peek its tiny green head out to catch a glimpse of the sun.  None of them did.  And then I realized there was one more thing I hadn’t done for them.

Somewhere inside of me there grows a wild jungle and a struggling vineyard.  The jungle is my imagination; the vineyard is my dreams. And in between them rests the barren wasteland; the cemetery where I bury my insecurities. Occasionally I visit this in-between place to check that it remains still and desolate, for many times horrible things have grown here and tried to suck the moisture from my jungle and choke the branches in my vineyard.  It’s cold here: a perfect place for burying my winter, for keeping my baby seeds away from the cold negativity that sometimes flurries into my soul. 

And so, on the day I tenderly tucked in my seeds, I buried a deep, frigid grave for my fears.  I buried my doubts in my abilities; my discouraging thoughts of 5,000 unfinished projects; my guilt at not being a better friend; the pain and remorse for the miscarriage I still don’t talk about.

And I carved with my finger over that grave, “Here lies winter,” and I walked away. For my seeds – for myself – I walked into a new beginning.  Then the smell of blossoms and fresh soil and the taste of sunshine on my skin awakened my vineyard and my jungle into a lush frenzy of growth.  And somewhere, deep beneath the surface of my garden, I swear I heard a hundred baby seeds whispering tales of springs long gone by.