Another Birth Day

Today is my Lily's birthday and I am thinking of that, how twenty-seven years ago I was in labor, walking around my back yard with my husband, stopping to hold on to him for contractions, Hank and May playing in another part of the yard, making an entire pretend city underneath the camellias and pines, waiting for their baby sister to be born.
It was a difficult birth and there was shoulder dystocia and she weighed over ten pounds and the midwife had to revive her at birth but it all worked out and it was such a beautiful day and after she was born I felt reborn myself in a way I have never experienced, before or since, just so grateful for my precious baby to be born and safe and pink and gorgeous, looking like a two-month old.

So grateful.

And I feel so grateful, still, for that child. That child, my daughter, Lillian Rose Moon Hartmann who has grown up to be a mother herself, who has given me the gift of two grandsons. One just never knows. One can hope, one can dream, but one really and truly never does know. Life can go this way or that. I am a pragmatist and I have a hard time believing that things are "meant to be" or that there is any plan and so, somehow, this makes it even more miraculous when things do blossom into a sort of grandness and glory, far beyond any expectation.

Last night we ran into some people I'd known a long time ago and the man of the couple had recently had a massive heart attack and according to them, had been clinically dead for fifteen minutes and yet, here he is, almost 100% fine and it was because when he had the heart attack, his daughter who is an ER doc was there and cops and paramedics got to the scene with the right equipment and the daughter knew how to do chest compressions and it all somehow, miraculously worked and instead of being dead or having brain damage, which by all rights one would think he would have, he is fine. He plays softball. He can still enjoy his life.
And the wife, after telling me this story said, "God sure must want him to stick around for some reason."
Of course, you know me. I wondered and wanted to say, "Then why did God give him a heart attack?" because honestly, it makes no sense to me at all to think something like that. And if he'd died, would she be saying, "God sure must have wanted him dead"?
Maybe.

It would be comforting to think there's always a reason, there's A Plan, there's meaning in everything and maybe there is but I don't think so. I think it's all just a fucking miracle. That horrible things happen and amazing things happen and that the very fact that a man and a woman can fall in love and create a life in the form of a baby girl who makes it to adulthood and then creates life herself and that all of that results in more and more love- well, that's just plenty of miracle for me.

Twenty-seven years ago I was in labor and I did the hardest thing I've ever done and the midwife was strong and wise and brave and so was that baby and so was I, or least my body was, and here we are and Lily and I are going to go get our toes done and maybe have some lunch and then I'll come home and whip cream with brown sugar and vanilla and confectioner's sugar and frost the cake layers I made for her yesterday and that cake has roughly chopped unsweetened chocolate in it and yet, it comes out all delicious and sweet and we'll put candles in it and she'll make a wish and blow them out and I will make a wish, too, the same wish I always wish whenever there's candles or a shooting star which is simply More. More of this.

That is always my wish, even with the unsweetened parts, roughly chopped, mixed in with the butter and the sugar and flour and the eggs my chickens laid and the love and the work and the pain and the fear and it was a beautiful, beautiful day when Lily was born, my beautiful darling daughter who grew pink, finally before my eyes while I touched her perfect body, chanting come on baby, I love you baby, you are my Lily Rose, and her eyes opened and she began to breathe and she looked at me and her daddy and I guess she decided to stay and her brother and sister loved on her and we all loved on her and to this day, we love on her and she loves back on us, and her other sister too, born three-and-a-half years later, and this was never what I had planned because I didn't presume enough to have a plan but it is a miracle and today, I am remembering that. I am wishing for more but at the same time, I am astonished at what has already been.