A Birth Day Love

I think Owen spent at least forty-five minutes in the bath tub today. He wanted to wash a Power Ranger and then once he got in there, he just kept having a good time. He didn't need a bath so much as he just wanted to play in the water and I completely understand that and I have no problem with hanging out in the bathroom with him while he plays.
He likes to listen to the seashells in there and hear the ocean in them. He listened to that one above and then told me that it made him think he would like to go to the beach.
I think that's what he told me. Something about going to the beach.

Ah. That boy. I look at that picture of him and I see his mother and I see his father. A perfect blending of genes in a boy who is thinking about the beach and listening to the ocean in a shell.

May is at the beach. It is her birthday today. She called me and we talked. May and I hardly ever talk on the phone without both of us ending up in tears but in a good way. A sweet way. An I-love-you-so-much-it-makes-me-cry way.

Today was the same. I told her that in a way, she had been my Gibson. That second child who completes the lesson of love which children bring with them. The lesson that shows you how absolutely limitless the love you have in your heart for your children is. I told her that I had heard of people who loved their first child so much that they decided never to have another and that I thought those people were cheating themselves of the rest of the message. Not that I think that everyone should have two children. Or any children for that matter, but that for me, it was certainly her birth that taught me how foolish my fears had been for my entire pregnancy with her- the fears that I could never and would never love another child the way I loved Hank and would thus be cheating this second child.

The second she was born (on my bed in a very small trailer house right down the road here in Jefferson County, thirty-four years ago this morning at dawn), and delivered unto my arms, I knew how very foolish those fears had been.
I knew my heart's ability to love was boundless and what a lesson that is.

I've told this before but I will tell it again- that before I got pregnant with May, I kept seeing a light out of the corner of my eye. A little light that would come and then flash away before I could focus on it. Drove me a little crazy, it did, but I was pretty in touch with the cosmos in those days. I wasn't too worried. I sort of figured...

So today on the phone I thanked her for wanting to be here enough to show up as a light way before she showed up as a baby. I thanked her for loving me. And then I said, "Thank you most of all for letting me love you."

And we both cried. And I am crying now.

We do not love our children each in the same way. Any mother who says she does is either lying or a very different sort of mother than I am. How can I love my Jessie the same way I love my Hank? How can I love my Lily the same way I love my May? I cannot. They are not the same and my relationship with each of them is so very different, just as they are.

I love each of them in very special, unique ways but I love them all more than I ever knew I was capable of loving and May is my baby who taught me that.

I don't think anything has made me happier in a very long time than the fact that May and Jessie and I all got to be with Lily when she had Gibson nine weeks ago. It was fitting beyond measure. It was perfect. My second child was with her sister when she had her second child. It was a moment of purest ecstasy for all of us. I have put this picture up before but I am putting it up again.

We are a chain of genes and of spirit and of love, our hands upon each other's bodies, welcoming the newest perfection of the manifestation of the love we all hold for each other.

In some ways, May is me and I am her. Oh, we do not confuse ourselves for each other, but we know we are entangled by more than those strands of RNA and DNA. We are entangled by the strands of our love for each other which is the strongest thing on earth. Just as I am entangled with all of my children but today, it is May I am mostly talking about. The daughter who looks like me, sounds like me, walks like me.

The one who came to me in light and then in body.
She walks in light even as I speak and I love her more than I knew I could and I do believe that love like this is something which even the ages will not diminish. If I believe anything, it is that the love we make and take is something not only as real as our physical beings but more so, and as such, will remain part of the this universe for as long as it continues. And may even have existed before we came to know each other in this existence. I'm going out there on a limb with that one- not quite sure- but as every mother knows, when a child is born, it is almost impossible to remember a time when that child was not there. So...perhaps.

And that's what I'm thinking about this evening as the sun is lowering in the sky and the day's heat is simmering upon the ground and how thirty-four years ago tonight I had had a day of giving birth and taking my newborn to the doctor to have her pronounced perfect (and oh, how that resident hated the idea of a home-born baby!) and then came home to rest and then make a supper out of the garden and how tonight I will also cook potatoes out of my garden and how much I love that child.

Owen has gone home to be with his mama and his daddy and his baby brother whom I already love as much as I love Owen which seems impossible but there you have it.
It's true.

This is my life and the light and the love held within it and these are my babies and it is May's birthday and I am just so damn grateful for all of it and no, I have not, nor will I ever do everything perfectly but you know what? That's not even part of the deal.

I have loved. And May taught me how endless that well of love is.

And she has let me love her and still does and I wish her the happiest of birthdays and we shall gather together soon, this tribe of love of ours, and celebrate that.

Key Lime Pie will be involved.

That and love.

Amen.

Holy Moley, Mother of God

Okay. It was some party. And I think that we need a house with BIGGER ROOMS because (a) everyone ends up in the kitchen, and (b) thirteen adults, one small child and two babies are hard to fit into one dining room.

Uncle Hank, Waylon, Jason, Owen, Lily.
In the kitchen.

Owen discovers his first man-crush. He is in love with Harley.

Shayla smiles through the chaos. Waylon is a bit taken aback by it all. (Me too, Way-Way)

This is a fun picture of Billy and his boy but I wish I'd gotten one of Waylon trying to suck his daddy's head completely off his body.

A taste of the chaos in the dining room. And Owen was doing his Orca impression the entire time. That boy has a set of lungs on him. After supper we set him down on the floor where he used the entire dining room as an obstacle course and crawled in and out of chair legs and under tables (there were three) to suddenly appear standing up in a new location across the room.

May, Billy, Bio-Dad, Other-Mother, Hank. For some reason, the passing of the butter was of intense interest to all.

Bountiful goodness.

And picture at the top of the post? No description needed.

Happy birthday, my love. Happy birthday. I hope you slept well. I hope you have a gloriously peaceful day. I'll talk to you soon.

P.S. Kids- you did a GREAT job of cleaning up. Hurray!
P.P.S. Why is there not one picture of Jessie? What's up with that?
Oh yeah. Because before Lily left I said, "Let's get a sibling picture," and everyone said, "MOM! You got one at Mother's Day."

So here's one we took on Mother's Day which Jessie is in. And where Owen is crying. See? He does cry. And manages to look cute.

Walking Life Into Being

It's hot, y'all. And muggy. And I have a birthday party to make. Two key lime pies with gingersnap crust and whipped cream on top. Shish kabobs of shrimp and vegetables and venison. I need to squeeze limes, I need to marinate venison. I need to peel shrimp.
And I'm stuck in this heat, this almost underwater of a day, stuck back in time, thirty-two years ago, when I spent a day just like today walking purposefully in my yard, slowly, slowly, with the beginning pains of labor. The ones that make you think, "Oh yes. Thank-you. This baby is going to come soon." The ones that make you think, "I remember this. But I do believe it'll be easier this time." The ones that allow you to smile and talk and think and just be so damn grateful the train has left the station, finally and at last.
I had done everything to get that labor started because my water had broken the day before. I had run down the dirt road. I had worked hard. I had had hysterics when my son ran away while I was taking a nap and my then-husband got distracted and lost sight of him long enough for him to wander down the driveway, down the road, naked as a jaybird with the two bulldogs by his side having an adventure. I had drunk gallons of the nastiest tasting black cohosh tea on earth.
Finally, like a car being pushed uphill which has finally made it to the top of the rise, the tides of labor had begun and I walked.
Grateful, grateful, grateful.
Our little community was small then. People kept checking in on me all day. A neighbor friend brought a box of raspberry Danni Bars which were a delicious chocolate-covered frozen yogurt treat. Where did Danni Bars go?
Everyone was happy I was finally in labor. A new baby was coming. A friend had lent us a cradle. A friend had made a mobile to go over it. Midwife friends checked in on me throughout the day. My sister-friend Lynn had come to collect Hank- his first time away from me. I trusted no one but Lynn with my first baby child.

And we walked, that husband I had then, and I. I never have been able to sit or lie down when pain overcomes me. I try to walk away from it, which doesn't exactly work, but it helps me.

That's what I was doing all those years ago. Waiting for a baby whom I thought would surely be a boy but who turned out to be a girl who, even when she was a toddler, demanded to wear dresses and changed her outfit many times a day to be more appropriate for every activity of her day. Not a boy at all. A dark-haired girl baby who came scrunched up and wailing.
But that wasn't until the next day.
Her actual birth-day.
But thirty-two years ago today, I walked through the heat and stopped when my belly contracted and wondered who I was about to birth and wanted it to get harder and didn't want it to get harder but knew it would have to and surrendered to the process of getting this new life here as I breathed and I walked in the heat of a day much like this one and I am there in my mind so strongly that it's as if I'm really there. Some trick of time and space. Some illusion born of heat and memory.
And it's still so powerful that I am crying as I write this.
My May was about to be born and as I waited my body worked, I walked on the clay-red earth of the yard where I lived, a few miles down the road from right here and my heart still turns over in the heat of this day, remembering the heat of that day as I walked and I waited and tonight I will see that girl, that May Ellen girl and we will all of us- her sisters, her brother, her nephew, her daddies, her other-mother- we will celebrate her birth, her being-here, her beauty, her grace, her miraculous place in this world right here, right now, thirty-two years ago, all of it and my heart is breaking with remembering.
I love her so much, that girl. That sweet dancing girl who loves to walk now herself on her strong, fine legs, through the heat and the cold, through her life that began thirty-two years ago and my heart beats her name and my legs remember that walking as I go to the kitchen to squeeze limes, break eggs, crush cookies, make pies for that girl whose name is tattooed in my womb and whose light kept coming to me before I knew I was pregnant. I swear it did. A presence of light I would catch in the corner of my vision and that's how I knew I was pregnant- that light.
Her name is May and she came in light and she walks in light and that is who she is, who I held in my belly in that heat on that day and before I knew her name, before I knew her face, I knew her light and in this perfect world of heat today, it shines on me as brightly as it ever did and knowing her has been and will always be, as it has been with all of my children, the greatest miracle, the most profound lesson, the ultimate joy of my life.