Float On (or, the strange juxtaposition of grief, gratitude, and joy)

I sit on the couch in the early morning dark, Christmas tree lights twinkling in the living room. A neighbor wearing a reflective vest walks his dog up the street. The quiet lasts just long enough for me to read for five minutes, and then I hear my son’s bedroom door open. He pads into the living room, wrapped in his fleece Batman blanket. When he sees that I’m up, he takes a flying leap and lands on the cushion next to me.

“Morning, Baby,” I say.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Reading the news. Looking at the neighbors’ Christmas lights.” Across the street, our neighbors, who are always up early, have turned on their Christmas tree lights as well. 

"Less than twenty-four hours until I’m eleven!” he whispers.

“How are you so old?” I ask him. I lean over to wrap him in a hug; he is tall and bony, but his cheek is still so soft when I kiss it. He wriggles out of my grasp and shoves his bare toes in my face.

“Smell,” he says, wiggling them.

“Ew. Get away,” I say, and he hops off the couch, cackling, then heads to the kitchen to toast himself a bagel.

His sister emerges a few minutes later, ear phones in, cords trailing to the phone tucked in the pocket of her robe.

“Morning,” I call to her. She pours herself a bowl of cereal and settles in at the dining room table across from her brother and eats, looking at her screen. I walk by her on my way to the shower and touch her shoulder. She takes out an earbud. 

“Sorry, what? I’m listening to a podcast.”

“Well, untangle yourself for two seconds,” I say, but I smile and kiss the top of her head.

*

Eight years ago, my son’s birthday fell on a Friday. He was three. I’d planned to pick up his sister from school, gather him from daycare, and drive north to meet my husband in West Seattle after work. We’d enjoy a cozy family dinner at our favorite family-friendly pub, and the next evening we were going to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese and Build-a-Bear. But at lunchtime, a coworker started screaming from the copy room.

“He killed them! He killed all the kids!”

An entire first-grade class, murdered.

I couldn’t reach my own first-grader fast enough, all the way across town. The horror on the other side of the country gripped my throat until I saw my daughter safely at the door of her own classroom, standing in her purple coat next to her teacher. None of the parents lingered on the playground with their children that day.

I drove north on I-5 that evening, Sarah McLachlan’s mournful Wintersong in the CD player, my children buckled snugly into the backseat. And I wept.

*

One year ago, I wrote: My son will never again have a birthday where I do not remember this horror. My children's lives are forever linked with one of the darkest days, the day I realized that if our country could fail to respond to the slaughter of children then what hope is there? I still don't know if what I have can be called hope, because I'm mighty full of anger and, too often, despair. What I have is a crazy, incomprehensible mix of gratitude and grief.

Tomorrow morning, just after five o'clock, my boy will turn eleven, which is five more years than the children at Sandy Hook Elementary would ever see. 

My daughter started high school this year. I think of the twenty children who will never play the trumpet or clarinet on a school cafeteria stage, never get their first periods, will never get their braces off—they never had the chance to lose their baby teeth. They will never take algebra and cry over it. They will never get a driver’s license, or back into the mailbox with their parents' car.

Their mothers will never have the inexpressible, tender joy of having bony adolescent feet waved in their faces, those lanky limbs sticking out of fleece pajamas. They will never knock on their teenager’s bedroom door and say, “Come out of your cave. It’s lunchtime.” They will never open the door to an overpowering wave of too much Bath and Body Works Winter Candy Apple lotion, or the fug of unwashed socks when the room’s occupant has failed to empty his laundry basket into the washing machine. They will never threaten to remove those bedroom doors when their teenagers slam them.

*

Every year, I feel it: the gratitude and the grief. But more than that, I feel the crazy joy that my son has brought to our lives every single day of his existence. 

I write some version of his birth story every year, and often in this space. Tonight, near the end of 2020, which is universally acknowledged as a dumpster fire of a year, I think about joy. I think about how eleven years ago, Matt drove me to the birth center on Lake Tapps in the middle of the night while I howled through contractions and sang along with Modest Mouse at the top of my lungs, one of the songs he included on the mix CD he made for the moment. No soothing Enya for the hard work of birthing a baby, but something to keep me moving:

Alright don't worry even if things end up a bit too heavy
We'll all float on alright
Already we'll all float on

And less than four hours later, he was born into Matt's hands and delivered to my chest while I laughed. I laughed. And every day since then, every single day -- even on the darkest ones -- my son has made me laugh. 

(Mustache Day at school.)

Tomorrow morning, I'll wake up before he does, and I'll curl up on the living room couch in the glow of our Christmas lights. I'll remember the frosty darkness before the dawn of his birth. I'll fiercely miss sharing this season in person with his grandparents and auntie and uncle and cousin and feel grateful that we can gather over Zoom later in the evening to celebrate anyway. And I will give thanks for this sweet, ordinary life in an anything but ordinary year, because one of the unexpected blessings of 2020 -- while I'd never have wished it this way -- is this time with my family, and there's more than a little sweetness in that.

These Ordinary Gifts

Ten years ago tonight, Matt and I curled around our newborn son in the middle of our own bed. I traced my fingers over his pink warm skin. Kept kissing him, breathing in his newborn scent. He smelled like heaven. To take him home from my midwife's house only a few hours after his birth, to spend our first day together in the comfortable quiet of our own home, was a great gift.

Every year I tell my children their birth stories -- whatever version, whatever piece seems appropriate for them at the time. Isaac's story always includes this beginning: You were born in the dark of a frosty December morning. Sometimes I tell him that I sang in the car all the way to the birth center at two o'clock in the morning because it helped with the contractions. I don't tell him that I dilated from four centimeters to pushing him out in thirty minutes while I soaked in my midwife's huge tub, how I howled him right out of my body in two pushes, believing I would break in half. Last year I told him I made his dad drive through McDonald's for a breakfast burrito on the way home.

This morning I called him over to the couch to look a photograph, one of the first my doula took of us together after he was safely earthside, just moments after his birth. His skin is so pink. His little feet are pressed against me, his head cradled in my hands, his arms flung out wide, unaccustomed to the sudden space around him. I kept touching my nose to his. A moment of falling in love.

Isaac glanced at the picture and shrieked, "Ew! Yucky!" And then he bounced away to the breakfast table, where he inhaled miniature pancakes from Trader Joe's and irritated his sister until she screamed, "Isaac! Go away!" But she also gave him a birthday hug, without any prompting from me.

I walked up behind him at the table and wrapped my arms around him, pressed my cheek against his. It's still so soft. For a moment, he let me.

"Happy Birthday, Buddy," I said. And because he is still little enough to be sweet to his mama, he hugged me back, kissed me on the cheek. His lips were sticky, and his breath smelled like pancakes and oatmeal and the last piece of a Top Pot donut his dad brought home yesterday. And I still think it's heaven.

*

The kids had their Tae Kwon Do belt test this morning: two-and-a-half hours of hard work. Two years ago I didn't know I wanted to be a Tae Kwon Do mom, just like I didn't know I wanted to be a soccer mom, and as it turns out, both of these things bring me immeasurable joy. (Really, I didn't have kids to sit at home while they watch TV.) Anyway, it seems to me that there are worse ways to spend a few hours on one's birthday than testing for junior black belt.

Sometimes, during ordinary Tae Kwon Do class, I drop them off and run errands. Or I stay, but sometimes I watch and sometimes I read, or I grade papers. Testing is different. I can't take my eyes off of them. It just all comes together, all their hard work, and I see the very best of them: their concentration, their drive, all the results of practicing and, this month, as many extra classes as we could cram in to make up for classes they missed when Suzannah twisted her ankle or I was away for training and we couldn't juggle everything.

This is a thing they decided they wanted to try, two years ago, and once they started I have never once doubted they would become black belts. It's not that, though -- while I'm proud of them, what I love is just being present for these moments of watching them do their thing. They are so present in their bodies, so fully immersed in what they're doing. Sometimes they'll glance over and make eye contact, and I'll smile, and I'll see them try not to smile back because they are trying to focus, but mostly, they're just wholly and unselfconsciously themselves. They are not thinking about themselves, they are being themselves, and when I am allowed into these moments as a witness, I am utterly overcome with love for these two people who completely remade my heart when they entered the world.

*

My son is ten. An entire decade of my life filled with this crazy joy. Today, when I look at him, all of it, all of it, washes over me. The wrapping paper strewn on the floor next to the Christmas tree. The way he scooped up his baby cousin this evening to carry him away from the hot oven before dinner and made him giggle instead of cry. The way he runs away from me when I drop him off at school early for Safety Patrol, not even glancing back as he races to join his friends and don his orange vest (but he will still give my hand three quick squeezes before he leaps out of the back seat). The way his hair sticks up in the mornings when he shuffles out of his bedroom before dawn, and if he's not quite awake, the way he'll let me hug him just a beat longer than usual before he pours himself a bowl of cereal. The way he pours himself a giant bowl of cereal as soon as he gets home from school because suddenly he is always, always hungry. The way he decides to put himself to bed just past eight o'clock every night and screams dramatically, "Tucketh me ins!" And superimposed over all of the moments in our life now are all of the moments we have ever shared. The way he wraps his arms around at least one but probably more like four stuffed animals every night. The way his wispy hair fell over his forehead before his first haircut. The way his round tummy bulged over his FuzziBunz diapers, the way he used to wrap his arms around my neck and let me rock him in the dark before bed. The way he used to let out these piercing screams as an infant, not because he was unhappy or uncomfortable but because he was letting us know that hey! He was there! He was a baby and it was awesome to be a baby! The way he was so brave the night we drove to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital when his doctor told us he had gone into kidney failure, the way I sat in a wheelchair with my four-year-old son in my lap as a nurse wheeled us to his kidney ultrasound at three-thirty in the morning, just so he could sit in my lap instead of sitting alone, the way he grabbed both of my arms and wrapped them around his body. The way he still remembers playing Zombie Cats during that hospital stay even if he doesn't remember bursting into tears at the sight of yet another plate of plain noodles and grapes because his diet was so restricted. The way he used to play at the splash park when we first discovered it, how instead of running through the water he would trot doggedly around the perimeter, again and again, lap after lap, his swim diaper drooping and his little sandals slapping the wet concrete. The first day I took him to kindergarten camp but knew he would be just fine because he would have Suzannah's beloved kindergarten teacher. His little red-and-white striped polo shirt. The way his belly used to round over his swim trunks. The way he stretched as he grew one summer; suddenly, he had no chub to hold up those shorts and he was always showing just a hint of butt crack instead. His first class at The Little Gym. The way he played in the wet sand at Ocean Shores and screamed at the sight of a huge dead crap, leaping to safety in his daddy's arms. The way he threw up four times on a flight to Omaha but wept when we wouldn't get him a cheeseburger as soon as we stepped off the plane. The way he used to hurl himself on the floor in a tearful toddler rage. The way he used to hurl himself cheerfully into the dog bed, whether she was in it or not. The way he used to bring me his nursing pillow, the way he'd say "Boppy!" with a big smile, and I would pull him up on my lap to nurse. The way his nursing manners deteriorated as a toddler, the way he'd poke his fingers into my nose or stick his toes in my face, so when he was finally ready to be done I was too, but also, the way I look at my children now and thank God I never rushed to push my babies out of my bed or away from my breast. The way he used to crawl like a jolly little komodo dragon, barrel chested and bent on destruction, flinging books off the bottom shelf or upending the dog's water dish or tossing his toy cars in the toilet. The way he still brings me his fleece Batman blanket on Sunday afternoons when I lie down on the couch for a nap, the way he tucks it around me and gives me a kiss.

*

Sometimes the moments wash over me, all at once. I watch my son kihap as he breaks a board with his heel. He bows as Master hands him the halves, and he runs across the mat, bows again, hands me his broken boards. My eyes fill with tears, not so much because I am overcome with the sight of my son breaking boards again (which is one of my favorite parts of testing) but because today, in this moment, this lanky, sweaty boy is also my pink warm newborn, my big-bellied toddler, my sweet kindergartner. He is my son sleeping in the backseat, building Lego creations in the family room, curled up in the recliner with a book, zooming around the driveway on his scooter.

Let me never take such ordinary gifts for granted.

*

Seven years ago, the day my son turned three, twenty first-graders were murdered in their classroom. My daughter was a first-grader then. My son will never again have a birthday where I do not remember this horror. My children's lives are forever linked with one of the darkest days, the day I realized that if our country could fail to respond to the slaughter of children then what hope is there? I still don't know if what I have can be called hope, because I'm mighty full of anger and, too often, despair. What I have is a crazy, incomprehensible mix of gratitude and grief. I think of twenty children who should be eighth graders now, who should be planning their high school schedules. Instead, they never even lost their baby teeth, never learned how to play the trumpet or the clarinet, never looked into the audience at a middle school band concert to see their parents filming their beautiful squawking debut, never got their first periods, never got braces. It seems spectacularly unfair that some of us get to raise our children through these ordinary moments and some of us don't. I struggle with this often, but especially on this day.

Seven years ago I had a three-year-old and I had a six-year-old. Seven years later I am lucky enough to have them both, still. To celebrate their ordinary moments and extraordinary lives. They grow so quickly. It's bittersweet. Achingly so. And mostly sweet. Because they grow, and they will not let me drop anchor at despair.

Every year, and especially every December, the darkest month of the year, I look at my son, at both of my children, and remember the light.

So this is my prayer, every December: Let me never take such ordinary gifts for granted. Let me find a way to use my gratitude, and my grief. Let me not drop anchor at despair.

Dear World: This is my girl

It's late, and I just tucked my exhausted children into bed, but I wanted to document this moment, however inadequate my late-night musings may be.

We celebrated my girl's tenth birthday today. Ten! She is ten! How is it possible? How has a decade, which seems like such a weighty, significant length of time, actually passed since her birth on that gray Sunday morning? Then again: she is so deeply anchored in this world, and in our hearts, that trying to remember our lives before her seems like a strange trick of memory.

Dear World: I want you to know some things about my girl. I want you to know how much I love this child. I want the world to love her like I do. Loving someone as much as I love my babies just makes me feel kind of desperate and crazy most of the time. Sometimes I feel like the best I can do is hope and pray that this crazy love will make up for all the ways in which I cannot possibly live up to the task of raising them well enough.

My daughter loves to laugh. She is also obnoxiously funny in that fourth grade way that irritates me now but that I will absolutely miss one day. (Things that are "funny" in our house include terrible puns, terrible knock-knock jokes, and anything including bodily functions. Oh, you thought that was limited to boys? It doesn't help that she has a little brother whose favorite word lately is "booger," but I am here to tell you it's not limited to boys.)

She is friendly. Nothing delights her more than seeing someone she knows. If she recognizes someone from school at the grocery store she insists on running over to say hello. Sometimes on our way home she'll cry, "Mom, I see my friend!" and it will be literally some kid her in class she saw not ten minutes earlier, but she is still so happy to call a cheerful good-bye after that person.

She is kind. One of the best compliments I received was from a staff member at her school who watched her standing up to an older kid who was picking on a younger kid.

She is incredibly stoic at the dentist. I don't know why I find this relevant; maybe as her mama I'm just so proud every time they say, "She's seriously one of our best patients." They probably say that to everyone who doesn't cry, I don't know, but last year Suzannah had to have a filling and it wasn't fun, and the dentist said that while she held it together really well in the chair I might just be prepared for her to be a little shaken or emotional afterwards. And I was like, hey, I majored in being shaken and emotional! I've got this. But Zannah walked to the car, spit casually onto the asphalt before climbing in, and asked if she could really have ice cream for dinner and also could we please hurry home so she could do her homework.

At the same time, she is sensitive to people's feelings. She is sensitive to perceived injustice. She in sensitive to what she perceives as imperfections: she will lose her mind if she thinks she will be late for school, or if she forgets a math assignment in her desk, both of which have happened exactly once this year. The tardiness was out of her control (ahem, Matt) but the math assignment was a simple mistake. Both, I thought, provided opportunities to learn how to deal with life and the pressure to be perfect, and I resisted the powerful urge to try to fix it for her. It was hard on both of us. But it's not the last hard moment we will have: I know this, too.

She loves school, loves learning. She reads greedily. She thinks math is fun and she's proud of being good at it. She tells us that her class is full of weirdos, and she says it proudly. She's not "cool" and she she seems to be unabashedly okay with this, and this is something about her that I love so much; I will do anything to protect that in her. She doesn't engage in drama at school; if it exists, she doesn't appear to notice. Her best friends are the boys in our neighborhood, but lately her "best friend" is a girl at school who she has been "hanging out with a lot lately, like the last two weeks!" (She's actually a lovely girl who's been in her class for years, but lately they've bonded over, I don't even know, math and Harry Potter.) She deeply loves everyone who has ever been her teacher. I can't blame her. I love everyone who has ever been her teacher.

She is bookish and bossy, which she maybe gets from her parents (although I am admittedly the bossier person in our marriage, though Matt is probably equally as opinionated). She also loves sports, and I have no earthly idea where she gets that. Matt and I love to be active, and Matt is all about tossing a frisbee or playing tennis or engaging the kids in hard outdoor play, but neither one of us give the remotest of shits about, say, football, and our child can watch an entire game and be actively engaged the entire time and I have a pretty good feeling she understands it far better than we do. She plays soccer every day at recess and can't wait to tell me about the day's game when I pick her up at the end of the day.

She wants to play the drums. Gulp.

She loves people. If you become one of "her" people, know that it matters. Know that when you see her, and smile, and give her a high five or a hug, it matters. If you know her name, it matters.

So today this girl of mine turned ten.

We celebrated with a trip on the light rail, first to Trophy Cupcakes and then to her very first Mariners game, and she got to spend most of the day with not only her parents and brother but her beloved Uncle Aaron and Aunt Morgan and Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Diane. She seemed to love every moment. Full disclosure: we left the game a little early, as it was a night game and we wanted to avoid the crush of people leaving the stadium. She was disappointed at first, but Isaac was totally done by the time we made it to the light rail; he fell asleep on the way to the transit center. Both kids zonked out as soon as we buckled them into the car and snored the entire way home, and both kids changed robotically into pajamas and collapsed in bed within minutes of pulling into our driveway.

"Was it a good day?" I asked my daughter, curling around her in her bed after I tucked her in.

"Uh huh," she said. She pulled her blanked over her head, like she always does. Then she smiled.

"You can give me some extra kisses, if you like," she said.

Still, I believe in the hope

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” ― Anne Lamott

I've been thinking about this all week: about hope, and about darkness, and about the strange juxtaposition of the two that I cling to every Advent. I would say particularly this year, but the truth is that every December is dark, and this is something I wrestle with each year. I'm not sure that's much of a comfort, though.

Still, I believe in the hope, in the dawn, in the light, despite everything. It is literally the only way I can live.

Six years ago today, my three-and-a-half year old daughter was supposed to appear in her very first Christmas program. As luck would have it, she spent the entire weekend miserable with a fever, cough, and runny nose, so we hunkered down in our pajamas instead of watching our baby girl in church. Reading over my journal (one written in a fog of late pregnancy, but one I am still so glad I have) I remember that in the midst of our excitement and anticipation for our new little one, I also felt quiet and a little lonely. I had already stopped teaching for the year, finding it impossible to put on my socks by myself, much less manage classes full of teenagers. I didn't see anyone during the day, which is perhaps one reason I loved my visits to my midwife so much--just to connect with another human for awhile, to feel her loving hands on me, to listen to her soothing, authoritative voice.

I spent those last days mostly on the couch, trying to read, trying to write. "Mostly," I wrote, "I'm just waiting."

My son was born on a dark and cold December morning six years ago tomorrow. My water broke shortly after I went to bed on Sunday night. I sang my way to the birth center at two o'clock in the morning, sitting on a folded towel. I alternated between "Float On" by Modest Mouse and "Revelation Song" by Phillips, Craig, & Dean. Both seemed appropriate.

I've told his birth story before, even here. I never grow tired of remembering it, but tonight, on the eve of his sixth birthday, the part I want to remember the most is the rush of pure joy as he was born into his father's hands, and the way I laughed when he was delivered to my chest.

(Is it strange that I can't type that without crying?)

In Hebrew the name Isaac means He laughs. Laughter. On that dark December morning when ice coated the driveway of my midwife's house at the edge of Lake Tapps, my son was born into our family and I laughed. I laughed and I fell in love and that joy carried us home a few hours later, followed us into our own cozy little house where we introduced our baby to his big sister, who was eating waffles with her auntie.

Tomorrow morning, that boy turns six years old, and he is still our light, our joy, our laughter. Even though his birthday falls during the darkest part of the year and I will never be able to completely untangle it from the dark events that surround it, maybe that is the point. Sometimes despair just envelops me these days. I wonder if I'll ever again celebrate his birthday without feeling helpless rage over the Sandy Hook massacre, for instance, which happened the day he turned three. Tomorrow he will be the same age as those children who were executed in their classroom, and I struggle mightily with the fact that my children live in a world where this is a real fear of mine. I have a plenty of irrational fears and I will own those, but this one has struck close to home and I know it will continue to strike. I struggle mightily with raising children to be compassionate allies when it would be so easy to raise them to be a part of the status quo that will continue to serve them at the cost of our humanity. I struggle with feeling completely and utterly inadequate for the job. But my struggles are nothing compared to the struggles of those who have lost their children, their safety, their homes, their dignity, their faith. And the fact that this life is a struggle doesn't give me permission to check out or to build a wall around what I have and hold dear; it calls me to show up and roll up my sleeves and work and, yes, wait, which has never been a particular strength of mine. I'm still figuring out what, exactly, that means.

Today, on his last day of being five years old, my joyful son took on his first speaking role in a Christmas program and he was objectively, totally fabulous--both of my children were--and my heart burst in all the predictable ways. Sometimes I think the entire point of me writing anything ever is just to try to keep and hold these beautiful moments for myself because they pass, and they fade. So quickly. But I also think that maybe this is my own small way of lighting the darkness. To remind myself that darkness will fall, again and again, and sometimes I will just have to sit down in it, but I cannot and will not stay there.

Recovering

The first weekend of second semester is one of my favorite weekends of the school year. I don’t have any grading hanging over my head yet, and aside from a small handful of new students who transferred into my classes this week, I know my kids well. This is the time of year when sophomores start to really get it, when things start to click. They trust me enough to take some risks. On rougher days I remind myself of the student last year who spent first semester generally behaving like an ass and doing exactly no work; of course it’s safer to pretend like you don’t care or are bored by it all than to admit that it’s hard or you need help. But second semester, something made this kid try, and he wound up passing. Not by much, but he passed, all on his own, and he was proud. I was proud. These are the things that keep my stubborn little flame of optimism alive, even through the winter slog of January and February.

(Except it’s not a winter slog, not here in Washington. I am a girl who loves winter. I love the snow, even though we rarely have it here, or perhaps because we rarely have it here. And I love the rain, too. I really, really do. But the rain in February is nothing like the rain in November; it’s sweet already with the scent of spring. Things begin to bud in early February. Just over a month from now, the cherry blossoms will be bursting all over the city. I love it, I love all the weather here. Every single season. I am generally not one to complain about the weather.)

All that to say: I have felt pretty beat-up this week. I have felt tired and defeated and sad.

I’ve been trying to shake a cold for nearly two weeks now. I feel pretty good tonight, really almost back to normal, but I haven’t slept well in days. I alternated between the bed and the couch this week, not wanting to keep Matt awake with my relentless coughing. I’ve gone through two bags of honey-lemon-mint cough drops. I am tired of waking each morning with a honey-lemon-mint cough drop glued to the roof of my mouth. I’ve been grumpier than I probably needed to be.

“I really hope you get better sleep tonight,” Matt said the other morning, undoubtedly because I picked a completely unnecessary fight with him before school.

I’m probably more sensitive when I haven’t slept and don’t feel well, too, but it’s been one of those weeks in which I feel like I’ve had to hear too many people’s opinions on teaching and teachers and schools and I just want to scream, “Give us a damn break.” Yesterday I had this totally embarrassing moment in which I burst into tears at school -- not in front of students, this was after-hours -- and wound up both laughing and crying and the same time, sounding just totally unhinged, I’m sure. I was sort of hoping that no one noticed except the person I happened to be with at the time, but today three different people who work in the main office just casually happened to ask if I was all right because they might have seen me sort of going to pieces in the hallway.

There were things this week that were not all right. I’ve been worried and heartsick because of kids who are Not All Right, two in particular and many more in general. And understandable as it may be, I didn’t do my best teaching this week. I think it was okay, but I definitely planned with my own stamina in mind more than what I actually wanted the kids to learn. (Probably one of my sophomores went home and complained to his mom about his cranky teacher, and now that mom can make a Facebook post about the state of education, and her Mompants friends will “like” it a hundred times and someone else will post an article from some parenting magazine about Common Core, and someone else will say, “This is exactly why I plan to homeschool!” See what I’ve started? I probably should have just called in a sub on Tuesday.) Last week I wrote to Becca, "I feel like it makes me a much better teacher to keep my finger on the pulse of the real school, with real kids. Okay, not that IB kids aren’t real, but you know what I mean. They keep me on my game. I can’t be lazy with them. I can’t afford to be. I fail A LOT. I feel like I fail far more with the regular kids. But then I think, would I really know it if I were failing the IB kids?”

I haven’t slept well this week. Last night I cried myself to sleep in this strange state of bewilderment, because so many things are going really well. Because I love my job. Because I come home to the exact life I dreamed for myself when I was my daughter’s age, really, one full of my own children and a husband who loves me even when I’m totally bitchy, a life full of plenty of blank notebooks and pens, a house of full of books, a life in which I can walk out my front door and stand at the shore of Puget Sound a few minutes later, a life in which there is no shortage of trees and fresh air and water and laughter and love. But I cried anyway, because sometimes the other parts get under my skin. Earlier today I thought I would write about all of that: the reasons for the tears and the grumpiness and the defeat. The things that make me feel angry. A little afraid, even. Or maybe just sad.

But tonight I find that I don’t really want to do that. I’m not trying to be vague or mysterious. I just want to inhabit a different headspace this weekend. Because:

First and foremost -- and I should have led with this, actually -- I’m the proud auntie of a beautiful new nephew! Matt’s brother and his wife had their baby boy early this morning, and the pictures indicate that he is just too kissable for words. I met Suzannah at her classroom door this afternoon and said, “Guess what! You have a new cousin!” and she jumped up and down with glee, immediately calculated how old he will be when we get to finally meet him this summer (too far away for our liking), and said, “I hope I get to hold him.”

My daughter carries her new dictionary with her everywhere these days. She brought it along to dinner in West Seattle tonight, asking us to give her words to look up as we waited for our food. She read it by flashlight in the car. She bursts out of her classroom every day with a smile, full of chatter -- and what I love, so much, is that she is equally animated in explaining the rules of pickleball and flag football and soccer as she is in talking about how they use interactive notebooks in class. I love this age. She loves to talk to me about the parts of speech, about strategies she uses to solve math problems, about the games she plays at recess. Her days pour out of her in an endless stream of stories.

My son speaks with equal enthusiasm about the new Power Rangers he and his buddy LJ play with. He reminds me daily of the Valentine’s Day party coming up, and can we please go pick out his Valentines soon? (He’s pretty sure he wants Ninja Turtle valentines.) At bedtime he is ridiculous. He comes running to find me after he finishes brushing teeth and says, “Mommy, I just want to look at your tummy.” And I say, “What? I don’t have a tummy!” And he says, “I just want to check!” And then he lifts my shirt and zerberts my stomach with real gusto, so it sounds like flatulence echoing through the house. Or he says, “I’m going to kiss you right off your face!” And Matt says, “Hmm, I wonder where he gets this,” and then Isaac and I are tussling on the floor in this crazy and rather spitty kissing war. Lately he’s also into all things gross, he loves to talk about butts and poop and stinky feet, and I fear this is not going to improve with age because every now and then when I glance at my husband and expect some solidarity I see him doubled over with laughter. Then again, it is impossible not to laugh when I go to tuck my sweet little boy into bed and he says, “Hey, Mommy! Want me to stink my armpit on you?”

I’m about to start a new poetry workshop, and as soon as that finishes I’ll be starting another writing workshop that will carry me right through the end of the school year. It will be lots of work that has nothing to do with teaching but is absolutely essential for me.

And really, even with this cold, even with the end-of-the-semester grading pileup, the first five weeks of the year have been filled with so much goodness: reading good books (Mink River by Brian Doyle has joined the ranks of my very favorite books of all time, and I know, I love a lot of books, but this is definitely in the Top 5), drinking good coffee, going on little outings with my family, spending a weekend in snowy Leavenworth with Aaron and Morgan. Taking my daughter out for lunch and book shopping on our day off from school last Friday, cuddling on the couch and reading “Bread and Jam for Frances” with my son. My son, standing on a chair in the kitchen and stirring pancake batter or using his new kid-friendly knife set to chop vegetables for dinner. My daughter, curled in the living room recliner or sitting cross-legged on her bed, her nose in a book.

Weeks like this -- or, at least, sitting down to write about them -- just remind me how all of life exists together, messily. How I can cry and laugh in the same afternoon, equally, earnestly. How the joy of parenting my children is mixed right in with the drudgery, the laundry and the picking up and the whining for snacks and the bickering. How teaching mirrors parenting: the highs. The lows. Feeling both joyful and broken, triumphant and totally inadequate, often on the same day. And somewhere in the midst of all of that there are always papers to grade and meetings to attend and hoops to jump through. It’s a lot. It’s life. And I guess that even when I’m writing here to process or complain or vent, I’m still really just trying to write a fumbling love letter to it all.

Birthday Weekend

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer." -- Maya Angelou

And just like that, I have an eight-year-old.

She isn’t too old yet to tire of her birth story. I share different details with her every year. Last year she was fascinated by photographs documenting her week tucked into the bili blankets in our kitchen as she recovered from jaundice. This year, I told her about the little ordinary details of the day itself, the hard kernels of memory that anchor her birth firmly in our family story. I told her that as soon as she was born someone brought me a grilled cheese, and it was the best grilled cheese I believed I’d ever tasted. As soon as I wolfed that down I turned to Matt and demanded a hamburger. He went off in search of one while they wheeled me into my postpartum room, my brand-new daughter in my arms.

We laughed about the nap Matt took on the little fold-out chair in our room that afternoon, how he slept so hard he didn’t even stir when a group of friends came to visit. (“Wasn’t that nice for you,” I grumbled playfully. Eight years out, I think I can finally laugh at the horror of sleep deprivation I faced in those first few days. The first night, I didn’t sleep because I was in labor. The second night, I didn’t sleep because I had a newborn who needed to be fed and who I couldn’t figure out how to feed very efficiently. The third night, we were home in our house with a newborn who would not sleep and I had no earthly idea what to do about that, so mostly I rocked her and cried.) I told her that eight years ago today her daddy changed his first diaper and he figured it out just fine. I’m not sure I even helped.

And I forget what prompted me to say this, some little show of attitude or resistance, but tonight I definitely said, “Oh yes you will, because I am your mother and I pushed you out of my body and it was a lot of work and it hurt and I think you can do this one tiny thing for me.” She laughed, rolled her eyes, and complied.

I crawled into bed with her for goodnight snuggles just a bit ago, something that still happens every night. More often than not I will say, “Okay, but nice snuggling tonight, not too silly, okay?” and then we wind up shaking with barely suppressed giggles. Tonight, we were both tired. I curled around her -- so different than curling around a newborn, to be sure -- and she pressed her backside into my stomach, tangled her feet with mine, and fell asleep. When this happens it’s hard for me to tear myself away, because I know these moments are limited, although secretly I hope that she won’t give up on the snuggling any time soon. I stayed there, breathing in the scent of her hair, the faint whiff of cake still lingering on her breath despite bedtime teeth brushing, and the slightly grubby undertone of elementary school kidness.

It is nothing like sleeping with an infant. But in some ways it is just as sweet.

We spent Memorial weekend in Vancouver, BC with my parents, Matt’s parents, and my brother and sister-in-law. Suzannah’s birthday gives us the chance to be together all at once and it was a nice reason to decide to take a mini vacation, so the ten of us squeezed into two Honda CR-V’s and headed north on Saturday morning. We stayed long enough to take in the aquarium and Stanley Park, eat a couple of good meals, check into a hotel, sleep more or less peacefully, and go swimming in the morning. I wound up sharing a bed with Suzannah, which didn’t surprise me much. We originally tucked the kids in together after all sorts of promises and admonitions to behave! and they were so worn out from walking that I really thought they’d just go right to sleep. But then Matt went out for a walk, and I tried to read for a bit before turning off the lamp next to my bed. Right away I heard the whispered “Tee hee hee!” and “Isaac, stop it,” and after about five futile conversations involving my patiently explaining to them how frustrated I was, I said, “Okay, that’s it. One of you is going to have to come and sleep in bed with me.” Suzannah popped right up and said, “Can one of us?” And that is how I wound up with Suzannah in bed with me, and when Matt returned I explained that I was very sorry but he would be sharing a bed with Isaac. Within about forty seconds of the switch they were both completely unconscious and sprawled diagonally across both beds. Matt and I curled ourselves between their limbs -- no amount of shifting and shoving could get them to keep to their own side of the bed -- and slept, too.

***
There is a particular tree in Stanley Park with a curved trunk that appears in a handful of our family photographs dating back to 1979, the year I was born. In those first pictures, I’m sitting on that curved trunk, nestled between my parents.

The summer I was nine, my parents took us on a two-week long road trip through the Pacific Northwest—Spokane to Portland, Portland to Seattle, Seattle to Victoria and Vancouver, BC. In Vancouver we watched the killer whale show at the aquarium. My brother and I planted ourselves squarely in the “splash zone,” shrieking when the orcas rose from their pool and belly-flopped again, sending a wall of water cascading over the lower bleachers. We were drenched and delighted. Afterwards, my parents took us on a little walk along the waterfront until we found it.

“This,” my father said, “is our tree.”

And so it was. I recognized it immediately. I even noticed the same name carved into the trunk—JAY, in block letters. Who knew how long ago someone had left his mark there? My brother and I arranged ourselves side-by-side on that strange curved branch, worn smooth over time. A Mountie rode past on his handsome black horse and offered to take our family photograph; then, he posed with my brother and me. When I look at the photographs now, I can see the faint crimp marks in my hair, flattened by that salty wave back at the aquarium—I can still feel the itch of salt drying on my skin.

We found it again this weekend, all ten of us, after a bit of blundering up and down the walking path. My parents and I attempted to recreate the picture from 1979 (I didn’t need so much help sitting upright this time), and then Aaron and I squeezed in together to duplicate 1988 -- a bit more challenging than it was when we were nine and seven, and our behavior hasn’t particular improved over the years. (“Smile! Shari! Put your tongue back in your mouth! Come on, a nice picture!”) And then I settled my own two children into the sturdy arm of this tree, taking my place in the background, my hand on the smooth wood. Isaac flailed and stuck out his tongue; Suzannah struck all sorts of bizarre poses. I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. They come by it honestly. Maybe they’ll try to look normal in pictures someday, but I wouldn’t count on it.

On a cellular level, I am every age I’ve ever been. I feel this often, especially when I look at my children. It’s a little disorienting to remember standing at this very spot when I was their age, to remember the way the moment felt. The itchy drying salt. The smooth wood. The oceany waterfront smell. Adding another photograph to our timeline of trees feels like a sturdy thread connecting my present to my past.

And what a blessing it all is, indeed.

Even if things get heavy we’ll all float on

"It’s really striking me tonight how normal it feels to have two children, like our family has always had room for Isaac. Like we’ve hardly had to adjust to him...He’s so big and fat and wonderful and growing so fast. He has the widest eyes and the most expressive eyebrows I’ve ever seen. He always seems like such a happy little guy; I hope that means he’s always going to be mostly okay.” -- my journal, July 1, 2010

It is the eve of my son’s 4th birthday. As I do every year, I remember: the way I chatted with my sister-in-law shortly before midnight (the time I’m writing this, right now), feeling like I would definitely still be pregnant for awhile. The way I felt almost exasperated less than two hours later when my water broke dramatically all over the bathroom floor because I’d just gone to bed and was tired and was not particularly in the mood to be in real labor. The drive to the birth center after Morgan came over to stay with Suzannah, me singing “Float On” at the top of my lungs in between contractions:

Alright don't worry even if things end up a bit too heavy
We'll all float on alright
Already we'll all float on

Laughing less than four hours later as he was born into his daddy’s hands and lifted to my chest.

Holding him in my arms, kissing his nose, and falling in love.

Tonight he shrieked with laughter as he scooted his new Iron Man toy across the kitchen floor. He helped his Grandma Winslow make a pumpkin pie, and when Matt and I tiptoed into his room after our date tonight, intending to kiss our sleeping son, he opened his eyes and whispered, “Is the pie out yet?” He inherited his daddy’s big feet with the giant big toe, and he’s tall. But his baby fat -- the delicious chubby rolls I nibbled every day of his babyhood -- has given way to little boy leanness, skinny legs and knobby knees. But his belly -- that yummy round tummy! -- still pokes out underneath his pajama tops.

Sometimes when I see Matt’s socks crumpled on the floor in random places, I think, My house will be full of stinky boy socks forever. And then I can’t help but giggle at that absurdity. Someday, God willing, I will live with a teenaged boy who will likely be taller than I am. I won’t want to kiss his toes the way I still want to kiss them now, when he waves them in my face and hollers, “Smell my stinky foot!” I have these little flashes of hugging his stretched-out, grown-up lankiness and it is almost too much to bear, but it is also the thing I want most from this life -- maybe the only thing I really want. For my children to last longer than I do.

Last year, on the day my son turned three, twenty-six people -- most of them children exactly my daughter’s age -- were shot to death in their elementary school. I couldn’t eat lunch with my friends that day; I could only hurl my food into the trash and cry uselessly into my hands, trying to compose myself before turning on Ten Things I Hate About You for my seniors that afternoon and resisting, somehow, the urge to drive across town and take my children home and stay there. Forever. That evening, the kids and I drove to West Seattle to meet Matt after work. We ate a comfortable dinner together, the kids cheerfully oblivious, excited for weekend birthday festivities. I swung between desperate grief and desperate gratitude, and in a way, I feel I’m still swinging.

This afternoon I drove across town to meet my daughter at her classroom door, listening to news of another shooting at another school. This time it seems the only fatality is that of the gunman but I’m still shaken, and angry, and full of inflammatory thoughts that do not belong in a post about my son.

Last week I told one of my most trusted friends that part of me is terrified all the time because I see all the ways I could lose my children on an ordinary day. It’s not rational, and I know this. I found this tonight -- I wrote it when I was pregnant with Isaac, the day after I learned a former student had been killed in a car accident:

I've heard people say it's easier not to have children for this reason, and of course they're right. On so many levels. Birthing and loving and raising children is such a huge fucking leap of faith -- it's nothing I could ever have prepared for. Nothing I could ever have prepared my heart for. It's so hard. We screw up a lot. We can't ever go back to the "before" that existed before children, a time that seems so hazy and nostalgic to me sometimes (remember when we could just go out whenever we wanted, to a movie or to have a drink? Remember when we could stay up late to watch a movie at midnight and sleep in the next day? Remember when we could take off on a spontaneous weekend trip without worrying about where the baby will sleep?). But I wouldn't give them back for anything, and the risk of my heart breaking (my heart breaks every day) is a risk I'm willing to take, because this love is the thing in my life that makes me think I'm a little closer to understanding the meaning of it.

I don't always (ever?) know how to find meaning in loss, but I guess that's another leap of faith I have to take.

Motherhood is such an insane mix of grief and joy. Both, at once. I’m a little afraid all the time; mostly, I think, I have learned to gently remind myself that fears are not facts, but it’s there, under the surface of our lives. It’s not that I think about it all the time. But I’m also never not aware of what I stand to lose. I don’t know why some people have to, and I know there’s no reason it couldn’t be any of us.

This may seem morbid for a birthday entry, and it’s true that I don’t think I’ve ever written about Suzannah’s birthday this way, but she’s a springtime baby and so far her birthday has never been sullied with the darkness my son’s has now. And yet: I refuse to let that have the last word. My heart shattered last year, but at the same time I felt so full, full-to-bursting, of gratitude. Of that desperate grief, that desperate joy that fills any mother’s heart, I believe, on a cellular level.

Pray, said my friend. And I do, or I try, and I love my family joyfully and imperfectly, and I wonder why I get to have them, but tonight, tonight, I do.

Happy Birthday, Isaac.

Alright already we'll all float on
OK don't worry we'll all float on
Even if things get heavy we'll all float on
Alright already we'll all float on
Don't you worry we'll all float on

Happy Birthday, my little carrot.

Tonight, driving home from IKEA with my mother and my sister-in-law and my beautiful daughter on the eve of her seventh birthday, we reminisced about the time she was born -- about how sick I felt the night I went into labor but refused to admit I was in labor at all (since she was born a month early), about how sick with jaundice she was after she was born, about how overwhelmed and scared I felt. There were other, happier bits in the storytelling too, of course, but tonight I keep thinking about that because of what came next.

“How long was I sick?” she asked.

“You were really sick for about a week,” I said. “Remember those pictures we have where you’re tucked into the bili box right on top of our kitchen counter? We had a nurse come out to our house to check on you every day.”

“But what day was I better?”

“Well, you spent about a week in those blankets,” I told her, “but you looked like a carrot for about three weeks after that.”

She burst into peals of laughter. “A carrot! Mom, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She was just delighted. A carrot! How absurd!

And suddenly I wished that I could somehow go back in time and give my new-mom self a huge hug. I remember -- and not fondly -- sitting in the brand-new blue glider, rocking my daughter who wouldn’t nurse off my rapidly filling, rock-hard breasts, wondering how I would get her to eat or how I would manage to take a shower. I bathed us both in tears, and every time some well-meaning person reminded me to enjoy every moment I felt a little more of my sanity drain away. Somehow it gives me a little comfort to imagine the mother I am tonight whispering to the mother I was seven years ago, “Someday, your daughter will want to hear every single word of her story.”

(Eventually, of course, we figured it out together. She learned how to nurse, and then eventually it stopped hurting. I learned that we both slept better when I brought her into bed with me. We learned each other’s rhythms. I tried to write it all down, even the messy parts, the hard parts, the parts that didn't go in the pastel-colored baby books. Those were the stories I needed from other mothers, because they made me believe that I could fall fiercely in love with my own, imperfect as it might have seemed at times.)

She’ll be seven years old in the morning. Seven. She’ll have memories of her own, memories of me, of this time in her life, of our family, and I realize that she really is the author of her own story. Not me. It’s a humbling thing, really, to realize our separateness long before she probably will, but I take it seriously. I struggle with how much of her life to share publicly now, because it really is hers. I feel so plugged into her psyche sometimes it terrifies me, even in -- especially in -- our more challenging mother-daughter moments, but at the same time I struggle with projecting myself onto her. One of my friends once wrote about how it’s only natural to see our daughters as idealized versions of ourselves, but that can be dangerous territory. I can see myself in my daughter, but she is not me. Nor do I want her to be. I wish I could put into words what I feel sometimes when I look at her now, when she doesn’t realize I’m just watching -- maybe she’s just brushing her teeth before bed, all long-legged and slim and slightly tan, and she leans over the sink to spit, gathering her hair in one hand and holding it back all by herself so she doesn’t get toothpaste in it. It’s such an ordinary, heartbreaking, wonderful thing, to watch this beautiful girl just be.

I really can’t write her story anymore; I can only write my own. There’s a loss in that, I suppose, but even on her first birthday I wrote that I would never wish her back to babyhood, as much as I ultimately loved it. Watching her become her own beautiful self, whatever I might wish for her -- that is my life’s greatest blessing and my deepest joy.

Isaac's Birth Story: One year later

(Suzannah's first birthday happened to occur over Memorial Weekend, which afforded me the luxury of spending the day reliving the morning we became a family and gave me plenty of time to write her a long letter in the journal I keep for her. Today, I foolishly did not take the day off from school and I wish I had, because I am having the hardest time actually doing all the professional things I am supposed to be doing. I really just want to sit here and look at birth/newborn photos all day long. And right now I should be grading a bunch of sophomore notebooks, but there is no way I can concentrate on any of that until I write this out.)

One year ago at this time, I was snuggled on the couch nursing my brand-new baby boy. I spent most of the day there, sending Matt out for food and calling people on the phone and just basking in Isaac's perfect newborn smell. Patti, my doula, called a few times and gently reminded me to get some rest -- but I was riding the most incredible high of my life. It didn't even matter that I hadn't slept since midnight the night before, when I dozed for about forty-five minutes before my water broke in a giant, splashy, dramatic way as I jumped out of bed and vaulted into the bathroom.

I remember singing at the top of my lungs on the way to the birth center; Matt had made me this great Labor Mix that included songs like "Revelation Song" and "Float On." I remember the way he grinned a bit when I chanted along to Modest Mouse when I wasn't moaning through contractions. I remember turning to him and saying, "We're having a baby today!" I remember the light covering of snow on the ground out at Lake Tapps, and the way it made everything seem so beautiful and clear and impossibly perfect. I said to Matt, "When we tell our child's birth story, it will begin with 'You were born on an icy December night.'"

I never posted his birth story here, mostly because I am wordy and it is long, and also possibly because I was a bit distracted in the days and weeks following his birth -- but I thought his first birthday, a day on which I am practically drowning in nostalgia, was an appropriate time to share a part of it.

Nancy was waiting for us when we pulled into her driveway shortly after two in the morning. The outside lights snapped on, and Matt hurried around to help me out of the car. Nancy was beautifully dressed -- I swear she doesn't ever sleep -- and the rooms were warm and dimly-lit, with soft music playing in the background.

She did a quick check -- I never thought I would want to be checked at all, but suddenly I was terribly interested in exactly how far dilated I was or how much "progress" I'd made. When I arrived at the hospital with Suzannah I was 6 cm already, and I was just so confident that I'd made significant progress already this time, too. Matt helped me lie back on the bed and I realized my legs were shaking uncontrollably, although I didn't feel cold. Nancy reassured me that it was totally normal. It was not the last reassuring thing she said to me throughout my labor; she has a way of being both fairly hands-off but very competent and in-control, so I always felt totally free to do what worked for me but also very well cared for.

"Well, you're about 2 cm dilated," Nancy said. Her tone of voice was as soothing and cheerful as if she'd told me I was 8 cm. I was unimpressed. Two? TWO? I was two at my last appointment. I'd probably been at TWO for the past three months. Two? Are you fricking kidding me? What about these contractions?

But I tried not to dwell on it much. Nancy's demeanor was so calm and in-charge that I didn't feel worried or tense, just momentarily discouraged. She asked if we wanted to watch a movie or anything to distract ourselves, if the contractions weren't too unmanageable. Patti wasn't there yet, so we popped in Sleepless in Seattle. I'd always thought I'd start my labor at home that way -- watching some mindless comfort movies or something -- so the thought appealed to me. I wasn't in agonizing pain yet, so it seemed like a decent way to pass the time.

Except that Patti and Dori, her assistant, arrived about thirty seconds after the movie started, and I promptly lost all interest in watching anything. For one thing, I was just so happy to see her; for another thing, the contractions were slowly getting stronger, and I realized I didn't really want to watch anything. I much preferred just talking with Patti and Dori. They were so cheerful and upbeat and seemed so genuinely happy to be there; Patti hugged me warmly as soon as she came in the door, and I felt so loved and supported. This was such an important part of the entire experience for me; I knew I was completely supported and safe.

I did, however, express my disappointment in my TWO. FRICKING. CENTIMETERS. Patti reminded me that I was still making progress, that these contractions were working for me. I'd been sitting on the couch when she arrived, but as the contractions picked up I moved to the birth ball, which felt wonderful. At first I just rocked back and forth and swiveled my hips while Matt applied counter pressure and did hip squeezes. This worked for quite awhile, and in between contractions, we all talked and laughed about a million different things. It was so relaxed, even enjoyable. Patti and Dori kept complimenting me, telling me I was doing such a great job of letting my body move and work, that they practically had to beg some women to move because labor just made them lock right up. The idea of sitting still or lying down was drastically unappealing to me, so this was difficult for me to comprehend.

As the contractions picked up, I found it more comforting to have Matt in front of me, so I could lean against him. Patti and Dori took turns doing hip squeezes through the contractions, and they all breathed with me. At one point, Matt had to run to the bathroom, so Patti stayed in front of me and rubbed my shoulders and stroked my forehead and the side of my head, reminding me to stay centered, to let go of tension, to go deep inside myself, and I found that incredibly calming. She's so gifted at what she does, truly -- she always seemed to sense when I really needed her to be hands-on and when she could work better by helping Matt support me.

Later, Patti remarked about how happy I seemed through it all -- I'd just smile after every contraction, a mixture of sheer relief and excitement. I just felt like I had the best cheerleading section on the planet. At one point, I felt a contraction coming on and I turned around and grinned at Patti: "Here we go!" And everyone laughed.

After awhile, Patti asked if I wanted to try leaning over the birth ball instead of sitting on it, so I did that for awhile. She talked me through some pelvic rocks, and at that point I could feel the baby kicking a bit. It felt strange to feel kicks during contractions, but in a weird way I tried to pay close attention to them because I knew that soon I'd be missing them (as eager as I was to kiss my baby's feet outside my body).

Sometime after 4:00 in the morning, they asked if I'd like to try the tub. OH, YES. I'd been so looking forward to laboring in Nancy's huge tub, and at that point it was really sounding wonderful. Nancy checked me again and announced that I'd progressed to "somewhere between four and five centimeters." Everyone was so encouraging -- that's great! You're making progress! Your baby is moving right down! -- so I really felt okay about the fact that I wasn't as dilated as I originally thought I "should" be. The contractions were definitely picking up in intensity, but I still felt that they were completely manageable.

I climbed in the tub around 4:30 in the morning, and things began to change. At first I knelt in the water, leaning over the side. Between contractions, I would lie back in the water or lie on my side, which felt wonderful and soothing during the breaks but didn't work during the actual contractions. I had a harder time relaxing between contractions and became decidedly less chatty. I think Patti sensed that I was growing more tense about what was still ahead, so she reminded me that my body was acclimating to the contractions gradually, that I didn't have to cope with the worst all at once, and that 2/3 of labor is the rest between contractions.

I never once wanted to be anywhere else. I still marvel at how completely safe I felt there. I'm not going to say I never felt fearful or tense, but those moments were fleeting, and I completely credit my birth team with helping to keep me centered and relaxed and trusting in my body's ability to birth my baby safely.

I hit transition in the tub, obviously, although I'm not sure when. After a particularly strong contraction, Patti asked if things felt different; I said yes, and that I felt queasy. She gave me a little bottle of peppermint oil, which I found immensely soothing and relieved some of the nausea. And then things picked up -- the contractions were hard. I was really struggling to work through them without panicking. But Patti and Matt and Dori continued to breathe with me, and I managed not to think about what was coming -- I just kept thinking, I'm doing this one. I can get through this one. I grew tired of kneeling in the water, or else I just felt like I needed to move again, so I slipped down in the water and turned over on my right side. Someone slipped a washcloth underneath my head. And then things really changed -- I had, I don't even know, two contractions in that position and I suddenly felt like I couldn't do anything to stay on top of them. I tried to keep my face relaxed and breathe or chant my way through them like I had been, but my body just took over. Something about shifting into that position, at that moment --

"I'm pushing, I'm pushing, I'm pushing! Oh, God! I'm PUSHING!" I found myself howling, suddenly totally panicked. Because that's exactly what was happening -- my body was pushing, and I couldn't stop it. I was terrified, because I thought there was no way I could possibly already be ready to push. I really thought I might break apart. Instantly, I felt hands on me, and Patti and Nancy were both right there saying, "It's okay! It's okay! Don't fight it, let it happen! Let your body work, it's okay!"

(Later, Patti told me that they never thought my labor would progress so quickly. Nancy had mentioned that she thought my contractions weren't quite strong enough to make it a fast labor even though they were obviously helping me progress, and when she checked me she noted that the baby still had to come down quite a bit. But neither one of them let on that things were anything other than moving beautifully, and for that I am so grateful. Not that it would have been a problem or an issue if things had continued as they had been for awhile, but I think I would have been discouraged had I tried to think about how long it could be. Trying to do labor math is a BAD IDEA.)

At that point, I just had to get out of the tub.

They placed towels on the floor and Nancy draped one across my shoulders, and all of them eased me out of the tub. I just wanted to get to the bed; at that point, I wasn't thinking at all. Matt helped me up on the bed and the next thing I knew, Nancy was saying, "Honey, reach down! Your baby's head is right there! Reach down and feel the head!"

I couldn't believe it, but there it was.

Pushing, at that point, felt wonderful -- I mean, oh, yes, it burned. But I had never felt anything so powerful in my life. I pushed with everything I had, and just like that, I felt my baby's head come all the way out.

"Matt, catch your baby," Nancy said.

And with another push, our son was born into his daddy's hands.

"It's a boy!" he cried.

When Suzannah was born, and I heard "We have a girl!" I cried tears of sheer joy.

When Isaac was born, I laughed.

I laughed as he was delivered to my chest, because I couldn't hold it in -- the force of that joy. I laughed because I heard my son's cry and it was beautiful and strong. I laughed because the relief I felt in that moment was profound. I laughed because I knew him. I laughed as I brought him to my chest and kissed his warm head and welcomed him into his family.

Matt cut the umbilical cord and the three of us curled up together. Isaac was so beautiful and so alert and he immediately latched on and began to nurse. Nancy covered us in warm towels, and it was all so gentle, so peaceful. It was exactly how his entrance into the world should have been.

After awhile, Nancy took him over to weigh him: eight pounds, nine ounces. She measured him on my chest, and he was nearly 22 inches long. A perfect, healthy boy.

I felt so good. So good. The high I felt in those first moments was unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life. It was just sheer bliss. I felt -- and still feel -- overwhelmed with gratitude: for my strong, loving husband; for Patti's loving support; for Nancy's gentle wisdom. For the beautiful baby boy born in such a beautiful way. And for the love and support of everyone who was thinking about and praying for us that morning.

One year later, I can't begin to describe what it feels like to look at my beautiful baby boy as he squishes his cake and frosting between his chubby fingers, to listen to his shrieks of laughter as he splashes wildly in the bathtub afterwards, to nurse him to sleep in my arms. To be the mother of these two beautiful children -- to see them together, to watch them grow, to watch Suzannah pat Isaac's head and call him a "silly boy," to watch Isaac break into a grin whenever Suzannah pays him the slightest bit of attention. To touch them both, to kiss them and hold them and breathe in the absolute sweetness of their skin. My family. My arms are full. My heart, oh, my heart -- it is full.

And finally...

After an absolute thrill ride of a labor, we are so happy to announce the speedy arrival of our son, Isaac James Winslow!

The basics:

Birthday: Monday, December 14th, 2009
5:05 a.m.
8 pounds, 9 ounces, 21.75 inches long
Born at the Lakeside Birth Center with midwife Nancy Spencer and doula Patti Ramos
Caught by his daddy after less than four hours of labor and only two pushes (TWO!)

...pretty much perfect. We arrived at the birth center shortly after two in the morning, and we were home again before Suzannah finished having breakfast with her Auntie Morgan.

I'm looking forward to writing up the entire birth story, but for now, I'll simply say that it was more than I could have hoped for, and so is our son.