{my topography}

Done with work. Done. Soo happy.

Last night, beautiful dark snow squalls. Leaving work, it looked like a rainbow rinsed of color in the sky above the door. An arch of gray and white, the first fat flakes hitting my tear stained cheeks.

This morning, blue skies, blue jays plump against the cold in the lilac tree by the feeder, golden light on the bar branches.

Eating Irish oatmeal, cream and strawberries & making lists in this notebook.

Yesterday was my birthday. I am 31. This terrifies me somewhat. Friday is the end of my work week–and the beginning of my leave. This excites me. Next Tuesday I’ll be 37 weeks. Full term. Not sure what to think about this. I am on auto-pilot until then. Wishing I could just hit fast forward.

Photo by M. Brott.

Bean is sick. Since starting preschool it’s been a nonstop barrage of sick all winter–for him, for me, for everyone in our family. It makes my heart ache whenever he’s sick. I want to just wrap him up, snug him into a pocket like a kangaroo; keep him close. Right now he’s next to me on the couch breathing faster than usual, eyelids heavy. My little boy.

***

On the way home he looked out the window at a passing church. “Who lives in that castle?” he asked.

“That’s not a castle,” I replied, “It’s a church.”

“What do they do there?” he asks, earnestly, his question empty of irony.

How do you answer this to a four year old who hasn’t gone to church? It’s not that I don’t want to bring him–it’s that I haven’t found a place that feels right, that feels free and expansive and generous and un-dogmatic.

I grew up with so much faith in my house–my father was a minister in fact, in a small esoteric church whose brand of Christianity was at once both utterly progressive and utterly archaic. Religion saturated everything my family did in some way: from church on Sunday among a forest of adult knees and elbows; to the way we celebrated holidays, or said grace over meals, or prayers before bed.

On one hand this certain web of faith held me, buoyed me up, carried me through childhood with a certain cyclical rhythm that was satisfying and uncomplicated. On the other, it made me feel like a pushpin stuck into a map. You are here, this is the way–the right way–possibly the only way. Rigid, certain, definite.

As an adult, it didn’t quite fit–nor did anything else. I feel closest to God in the middle of nature; when the sky is the color of melon and ice and opal; when the grass is wet with dew; when, sitting very still, I am witness to wild animals speaking to each other or shooting stars falling.

“They talk to God,” I answer.

Bean is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Do they see God there?”

“No,” I say. But then I change my mind. “Maybe they do.”

Who am I to say? Who is anyone? As Rumi says, ‘There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.”

Bean nods. “God is in all of the churches.”

Now it is my turn to nod. “You’re right,” I say.

“But I can’t figure out if God is a he or a she,” he says almost as a question. Then after a moment. “I think its a she.”

I exhale. On the telephone wires above a faded red barn, pigeons, silhouettes against the paling sky. “I think you’re probably right,” I say.

***
We listen to Feist, side by side in a pale circle of light. His fever climbs. He falls asleep. All I want is to stay home with him tomorrow, to hold him close. He is fitful. Wakes. Turns to me, eyes glassy, lashes long. “I love you,” he whispers.

This is the part you can’t even begin to convey to someone who isn’t a parent. This, this breathless wonder, this enormous love.

I am enormous. Every time I bend over the baby resists with a sharp kick. I can feel the outline of his little feet, his rump, his determined knees. Because real estate in my belly is at a premium, he’s taken up residence under my ribs. My groin ligaments feel like spaghetti. It seems beyond improbable that I have five more weeks. In theory. I have this gut feeling (no pun intended) that he’ll be a couple of weeks early, like his big brother.

In the meantime everything feels like it’s been taking place in slow motion. Everything takes effort: putting on winter boots, painting my toes (yes, I still can), vacuuming. Mostly I am counting the days–9 to be exact–until I am done with work. I am eager to be on leave. Eager to be home, nesting, puttering, blogging regularly. I know I’ve been a terrible blogger. I miss it, but I feel like I’m on energy saver mode, trying to get through these last couple of weeks at work where twenty-two kiddos are trying to devour me daily.

I need distraction. What are some new blogs you’ve been reading? Or some favorites (not already listed on my sidebar.)

I wake up to snow falling and the sound of little feet. Bean launches into our bed, his cheeks warm, his body all elbows and knees. It is too early and my body feels fragile and behemoth, even though friends continue to tell me I am “all belly.” I’ve been singing London Bridges in my dream.

On the lilac bush outside the dining room window, a dozen blue jays and one scarlet cardinal. Seeing them there against the pale and the white reaching out across the fields makes me want to cry. I feel a lump in my throat unbidden and ridiculous, hormones riding like wild horses across the dunes of my heart.

I move slowly, taking in the morning sunlight; eggs with thyme on toast with rosehip jam; a latte (I’ve never given up caffeine, raise an eyebrow if you must.)

Of course I am spending these days enjoying just Bean. Of course I know it will be harder with two. What makes me bite my lip is the way people say it—seeing my gibbous belly—as if maybe I am not aware that life will slip off into new, delirious, uncharted terrain. I am no fool. I’m terrified, in fact. But happy too for the small warm form of this babe against my heart, and the ability to move through a tight space without ramming into something.

At the breakfast table Bean and I make plans for our spring garden. Banana peppers, artichokes, sunflowers. All his favorites.

At night, lying in bed he tells me stories about a baby alligator named Honey Honey who lives in a drain and has pink and purple spots. He tells me about Actulark the shark, who can shrink small enough to swim in a teacup. He calls woodchucks “woodgehogs” after hearing about hedgehogs in a book. He has become endlessly fascinated with creatures that swim.

“Mommy?” he asks thoughtfully. “Where is a hammerhead shark’s mouth?”

Later he wants to know how whales poop, and how mammals make milk inside their bodies.

At the table eating leftover beingets from a French bistro downtown we’re talking about fair shares.

“How many would you and I get each if there were four beingets?” I want to know.

“Two.” He says without hesitation.

“What about if we had six?”

“Three each.” He says grinning, imagining the certain delight of three doughy treats covered with powdered sugar and dipped in maple syrup all his own.

DH hears us chatting and is incredulous. “How many would you both get if there were TEN?” He asks, invariably raising the bar.

“Four, no FIVE,” Bean says, after a slight hesitation.

I am enjoying these pre-baby days of early snow and sledding with just this one suddenly lanky almost four-year-old. I do not reminders, or warnings, or dour fortune telling.

One thing I know from watching Bean grow is that it all happens in an instant.

Why are people compelled to say things like: “You had better enjoy the last few weeks with just one, because two is not the same. It’s so much harder.”

We go out to the coop in the morning; bring leftover oatmeal and old toast. Break ice from the water canister, hang a heat lamp, staple insulation over the chinks in the eaves where the wind makes the last raveling of a summer’s spider webs flutter like a torn veil.

The chickens make little crooning noises as they peck at the cracked corn we pour by the scoopful into wide mouthed bowls on the straw covered floor. In the nesting boxes we find smooth oval eggs. Two tawny and brown; one the same pale blue color as the winter sky.

Today the sky’s obscured. White, and whirling snowflakes begin to fall. We head back indoors, leaving tracks across the yard. Three pairs. In another year, four.

I’ve grown used to the sway of my hips, carrying like a water buffalo this gibbous belly. I wear snug Ulu’s and the only down jacket that still fits over my belly. At night I rub honey lotion into my skin, and feel my belly stretching. Still not at ease with being pregnant, but present now and more content. I’ve had time to rest. I am starting to feel the days dwindle down. Eight weeks and he’ll be here. Little one, something like his brother. Maybe. I try to imagine his tiny hands, his eyes for the first time.

Inside at the table I sit and watch the birds come to the feeders through the snow. Cardinals, nuthatches, jays, woodpeckers even. Fighting for the fallen seed, grackles come with iridescent speckled backs. The air inside is warm and smells like wood smoke. I fold laundry: little kimono t’s and onesies. Nesting. Diapers arrive by mail and Bean stares at them dumbfounded. He likes the idea of a brother, but I can tell his mind can’t really go that far. How can it possibly? Mine can hardly take the leap.

In the hospital yesterday, in Labor and Delivery, I lay on an inclined bed with my arm hooked up to an IV of fluids and watched the sky change. Sunlight streamed in. The nurse was kind, efficient, full of laughter. It was good to be there. To be cared for. To feel the instant effect of rehydration. I had so much apprehension about going. Hospitals make me nervous. But it was good to have gone because it let my imagination slip forward to those moments, hours, blurred and drenched with sweat and wonder when this babe will arrive.

On Monday I go back to work for four weeks, then I’m on leave. Four jam-packed, helter-skelter weeks to complete assessments, interview my substitute, and prepare my class for the transition to someone else who doesn’t necessarily believe in magic or wonder or imagination the way I do. It makes me anxious, thinking of this. Anxious, but also giddy. Four weeks. I can do this much.

It has been so hard to manage everything this time around. A little like knife juggling, or dancing in very tall stilettos. Too many thing up in the air, twirling, frantic. I’ve been sick way too much, and then there has always been the aching tug of Bean wanting his mama at the end of every day. The first time around it was just me and DH, curled together on the couch after a long day, wondering. This time, we have so much: a life, a family, a house we’ve made, snow covered woods.

***
From all you second time around mamas out there: what to expect? What to prepare for? What things should I have on hand? In some ways I feel like a newbie as much this time as I did last time. Four years is long enough to forget. Looking at packages of diapers—I can’t remember, how many does a newborn use in a week?

I started the year off with a bang: in the hospital for a fluid drip after getting severely dehydrated from the most intense food poisoning/vomit/unmentionable sickness EVER. It struck in the middle of the night, after a demure and pleasant dinner out with friends.

Way to start the year off with a bang, no?