A Little Life

I have heard that first tiny Cry, strong, fierce and sweet, just three times in my life.  It is my favorite sound - the culmination of many choices, many chances, many struggles and many many miracles.  It represents those first unkind moments of entry into the cold world in which we all arrive naked.   Furthermore, this first Cry is the very first lesson we learn about our time here on earth; human existence summed up in one poignant declaration:  Life is not fair.  Not by a long shot.  

But. 
There is warmth and comfort to be found, which teach us the beauty in opposition.  It is then, in the Quieting of that first Cry, that we learn our second, yet infinitely more important life lesson:  We all possess the power to ease pain, give refuge and fill another's world with love. 

I'm hoping to hear this precious sound again - the Cry and then the Quieting - in the murky, melting days of late February to come.

There is a life inside me.  An actual life.  It is not a random mass of cells that randomly grew based on a random act done under cover of darkness one random night.  It is a life, a tiny but strong little life, growing, feeling, and defying the odds at all turns thus far.  Its first miraculous performance occurred when its presence had only been known to me a few days.  After being in existence just five weeks, a mere 35 days, this life had not only grown itself a heart but had set it beating in perfect rhythm, a wholesome flutter much quicker than my own.

At that point we called it a raisin.  Gabby would run up to complete strangers and announce jubilantly, "There's a raisin in my mom's tummy!  And it's making her really sleepy."  She left out pukey, grumpy, achy, dizzy, and perpetually miserable.  For a solid two months.  Just think - a raisin that can do all that!  Impressive, no?  Magical! Miraculous. And it gets better.

Our raisin became a jellybean, pinto bean, then grape.  Peach pit.  Plum.  Pickle, Popsicle, Hot Dog, Banana.  That's how my kiddos and I have measured the growth of this little life.  It made for a good laugh when Merrick's nighttime prayer included a plea that no one would eat his hotdog baby.  Or when Gabby whispered into my tummy, "hello little pinto bean.  I love you, even though I don't love pinto beans.  Please grow bigger so we can call you something else."  The food imagery has been thoroughly entertaining, if a bit ironic, considering that I consumed almost nothing during those early days.  Good thing this little life knows how to get sustenance, even when I cannot.  See - another miracle.

This is not me.  But I kinda wish it was.

The life has now been growing for 19 weeks.  In that time, that short, brief, tiny, infinitely minuscule period of time, arms have formed. Arms!  Imagine it!  And Legs.  Ears, Eyes, a Tongue.  A Chin.  Ribs.  Toes.  Fingers.  Beautifully jointed, dexterous, vein-lined and muscle-bound fingers.   But even more importantly than all of those: A Brain.  A brain that controls all these amazing things going on inside this little life - a brain that will soon make it's small body completely independent of mine.  It will breathe, grow, seek food, seek warmth, feel things, learn things, and even make decisions all on its own.

And while this little life may currently find refuge a few inches below my belly button, let's be clear: it is not a part of me.  It pumps its own blood, wiggles its own fingers.  I do not own it or control it, nor do I wish to.  

So I sit here typing and simultaneously providing room and board for the tenant I invited in.  I hope it's a cozy home, a safe place to work a few more miracles before it enters the world.  There will be kidneys kicking into gear, a tummy readying for nourishment to come and lungs lulling themselves along until forced to expand at first breath.  Is it asking too much for these last few miracles?  For the mere days that may mean the difference between thriving, surviving or even emerging alive?  I beg for it.

In the past I've proved to be an inhospitable hostess, a most unlikely place for life to find refuge.  Little lives have come and gone from existence, bereft of the miracles others are granted.  My body is imperfect, my girly bits particularly so, and the womb can be a cruel entity when the many cogs don't turn as they should.   This is not a failing on anyone's part - simply a manifestation of creation's profound delicacy.  And, in contrast, a profession of the extraordinary process that results in human life.  Life, in all its infinite, breathtaking complexity. 

My ears yearn for that first defiant Cry, my arms ache to provide that first tender Quieting.

Grow, baby, grow.

and when he is here at last I will sing this to him

 and weep with gratitude that we are finally together.