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‘Motherhood’ Category

  1. The Biggest Investment You Can Make

    April 4, 2013 by admin

    Lately I’ve been zeroing in on the power of investing in relationships.

    Investing in people is something I feel called to do, as a writer, as a Christian, and simply as a person. I count myself lucky that my life as a full time writer and mom allow me so many opportunities to connect with people – both people I know well and people I don’t.leaves on missouri.omaha.oct09 007

    As humans, we are relational beings. Communication is key to understanding ourselves and understanding others. You’ve heard me say it before, that at its very base, writing is about communication. But another way of looking at communication? It’s simply an act of reaching out.

    When I started writing my book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, this is what I knew: 1) I wanted to write for a living; 2) I had a few stories about my childhood that I had to get out on paper; and 3) Maybe someone would find the stories interesting.

    But what was I doing? I had no idea, really. I didn’t exactly set out to write a book. I did want to compile the stories in my head into some sort of order – and I wanted the stories to be artfully written – but why? Back then, I couldn’t have told you.

    But now (albeit a little late), I am starting to get it. Now, I realize that both the acts of writing and publishing Tough Love had a far broader purpose. My book is a way to connect with people (readers, writers, only children, Wyomingites, pick your label) who may have experienced even a sliver of what I did or wanted to understand something entirely new. In other words, by writing my story I set out to communicate and develop trusting relationships with those who would care about it.

    “Sharing goes to the core of what you do, and why it’s worth doing in the first place,” a fellow writer and friend of mine once observed.

    Hence my motto as a writer: “Bridging people through stories and expression.”Spring Mill 026

    “You want to find the people whose lives will be impacted by your work, your art,” writes social media consultant Dan Blank. And, he points out, it takes time to develop meaningful relationships and trust with others.

    What is your dream, really? I suppose it’s true that some writers simply aim for getting their name in print. But Blank nails the bigger dream of most artists:  “not just having a book with their name on it, but a true connection to readers whose lives you have shaped.”

    That’s it, right there. And whether I am developing a true connection via the written word or the spoken word – a phone call, a “How are you?” at the local library – I know that as a person, I am living out my true calling: to genuinely connect with others.

    Caring about other people will always matter, no matter what you do with your life.

     

    Category Books, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Social Media, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  2. “Home” Making

    March 12, 2013 by admin

    It has been two months since we rattled back into the Midwest with two vehicles packed to the gills, exactly no place to live and a standing reservation at the Best Western on the southern edge of the Kansas City suburbs. In some respects, it seems like we’ve been back in the Midwest for forever – as if we never left in the first place. In other respects, it seems like we just arrived yesterday.

    Life hasn’t quite slowed down for us yet. And of course with two little boys, a husband whose work schedule is forever fluid and changing and my own gnawing need to put words together and write, I wonder if that time of slow-down will ever come. I consider the word “routine” with longing, craving it like a piece of sweet decadent chocolate. Still, we aren’t quite settled here. Still, the kids wake up in the middle of the night. I drag myself out of my warm bed and go to them, then laugh to myself as I return to my own bed, flicking off the alarm that was (so many hours ago) strategically set for 6 a.m.

    I always feel so blessed when on my blog (or elsewhere) I run into a mother or mother-to-be who “gets it.” You know, that crazy anxiety of trying to do it all and be a champ at it all. I think at its richest, this flux time is fodder for material. I am living the book that’s yet to be written. It can’t be written right now because the story is still unfolding. We can’t very well write the book while it’s happening – because then we’re too focused on the writing to actually be living out those messy and wonderful moments.

    When Eli was still brand new, squinting his fresh eyes at the buzzing world around him, I found that my best writing came on my bed at 2 in the afternoon. There, in a weak attempt at rest while the baby slept, I lay with a legal pad and a pen, my mind too noisy to invite any form of sleep. I scribbled furiously, messily, caring little about handwriting or the neatness of ideas. My desperate goal: to get the words that flew around in my head out, somehow solidified and preserved. The writing may have lasted for just 20 minutes or a sentence. How many one-line prayers did I scribble in the margins? But words came, and they came from the deepest of places. Even after one or two hard sentences, I could look at that long piece of paper and feel good. Somehow cleansed. My world, after those brief moments, made a little more sense.

    The writing is becoming more regular these days, but still the routine emerges slowly, like cold molasses. Still I am mother first. Then wife. Then writer. But (and I know this will be true as long as I live) the need to write won’t let go. Even when I am covered in toddler pee and am holding a fussy baby in one arm while I clean up the mess. Even when I am pushing mashed sweet potatoes into a tiny bird-like mouth. Even when the piles of dirty laundry are stacked so high and there is dinner to get on the table and from upstairs a little voice hollers “Mom!” and my husband walks through the front door and wants a little love. Even then, that urge, that innate need to write, will stubbornly persist. And my self will not re-encounter its equilibrium until that need has been acknowledged, satisfied.

    How do you do it? Whether you’re a mother, a student, male or female, you, too, wear a lot of hats. How do you make time for your art? How do you prioritize the need and make it somehow align with your myriad other roles?

    Around here, we live one day (and yes, sometimes one moment) at a time. And, slowly, the story is being written, the masterpiece in its own time taking shape.

     

    PS: The next post, on Thursday 3/14, will pay some small reverence to the December shootings in Newtown, CT, exactly three months after the young gunman opened fire at an elementary school. It’s one writer’s way of processing tragedy the best way she knows how, via silent words. Come with a somber heart, or not at all.

    PPS – A much-delayed announcement: Thanks to your support, my readers, via new Facebook page “Likes” and new followers on my blog, $30 was donated to cleanup efforts following Super Storm Sandy. Thank you, for supporting my work and the power of communicating our life stories. You rock.

     

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  3. To Write Again: A Return to the Sweet Life of Art Making

    February 21, 2013 by admin

    So. Days melt into days, and weeks into weeks. Across five states and two time zones, from a place that perpetually feels like summer back to a place where winter is in full force and (amen) the weather comes and goes in seasons. It has been a long road from southern California back to Kansas City, the challenges of moving with two young kids fierce and at times unrelenting. Yet we have pulled through it, and in all the chaos, things are beginning to make sense again.

    Finally, we are emerging into a new normal. We are putting down roots here fast and hard. Desperately, we want them to stick because if we’re honest, this life of mobility, of pulling up our lives every one to two years to begin again in a new place, is just plain tough. It was the life of adventure five years ago, when we were still relatively newly married and without kids. Now, with two little boys in tow, we simply crave to be settled. For the wellbeing of our kids. For the wellbeing of our family.

    As I write, the wind outside is fierce, hurling hard snow against the upstairs windows. My little Eli, who was born in sunny California just seven months ago, can’t take his eyes off of the mean white stuff. I finished nursing him this morning, and he lay his head on my shoulder and snuggled into me, quiet. That’s odd, I thought. And I said out loud, ”Why are you so quiet?”

    Then I saw why. His eyes were wide open, staring intently out the window at the onslaught of blizzard.

    Snow. Something completely new to him.

    As I ease myself back into these waters of a writing life, I feel more and more at home. To be honest, I don’t know where my work will take me next. We have started over yet again, in a new community, a new place. Ideas throw themselves at me ruthlessly, and I snatch at them as if trying to catch beautiful butterflies in a net, wanting to keep them, study them, turn them over in my hands and then release them into the world again.

    I revisit old essays, wonder why some of them have remained untouched deep in a folder for so long. But the answer comes quickly. Mothering. Family. Life.

    Most important right now is that we have weathered a stretch of tremendous transition and upheaval. In this new normal, this new place we so much long to call “home” for the long haul, I am writing again. And dang, it feels good.

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Travel, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,, | 5 Comments

  4. 6 Reasons Why I Don’t Do Christmas in California Well

    December 12, 2012 by admin

    It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and yes, we are certainly loving it here. The happy chaos, the fresh evergreen smell of the Christmas tree that has, for the month, replaced one of the two recliners in the living room, the candy cane antlers that always find their way to the garden frog out front (thanks, honey).

    But a true-bred mountain girl will just never get used to a winter holiday season in southern California. Here’s why:

    Copyright Melissa Brawner, from www.creativecommons.org

    1)      No matter how many people ogle over the non-stop sunshine and year-round warm weather, a 72-degree day in December to me just feels wrong.

    2)      I completely over-analyze the outdoor Christmas decorations at Target, knowing I can’t buy a light-up snowman for the yard or a blue snowflake for the front door because it never snows here, and so clearly a snowman or anything having to do with snow in my yard would be ridiculous. (Then again, would a light-up festive pink flamingo be any better? Don’t worry. I didn’t buy that, either.)

    3)      When my mother texts me to let me know a light snow is falling at home, I burn with a twinge of jealousy.

    4)      It can take an hour to get to a Wednesday night Advent service 4 miles from our house, if traffic is bad.

    5)      I wonder how in the world people get lights up so beautifully on the roofs of their houses, and I feel  a pang of guilt every time my 3-year-old son remarks that we need to have outside lights at our house like everyone else. But that has nothing to do with California. It just has everything to do with my ineptness when it comes to outside lighting.

    6)      A palm tree adorned with Christmas lights makes this mountain girl slightly nauseous, even if my husband points out that the nativity set we recently unpacked came with palm trees because a person would be much more likely to see palms over pines any day in Bethlehem.

    Still, there is plenty to love about this time of year in California. I don’t have to bundle up my boys every time we leave the house. I can (gulp!) wear a skirt to a Christmas service without tights or wool knee-highs. And ever heard of a Christmas light tour through an ocean canal via hydrobike (that’s a bike that moves on water!)? Oh, yes. Date night December, here we come.

    *PS – Three more days to support Super Storm Sandy cleanup efforts by following my blog and/or “Liking” my Facebook page. Until Dec. 15, I will donate $1 toward cleanup efforts for each new “Like” or follow. Thank you!

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Life, Motherhood, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  5. Cans and Can’ts

    November 8, 2012 by admin

    I probably shouldn’t admit it here, but promotional efforts for my new book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood have more or less come to a standstill since I returned to California from my home state of Wyoming last month.

    For two solid weeks in Wyoming, I was out, reading and putting on writing workshops, engaging people in glorious conversation about the significance of telling our life stories. I met people of all ages with raw, captivating life experiences to share. I shared bits of my own life experience, exposing the wonderful, the challenging and the pivotal moments of growing up as an only child in rural Wyoming. Strangers and acquaintances came to know the strong and unforgettable characters who shaped my childhood: Great Uncle John, Grandpa Bucky, Mountain Man Chuck and that lady up in the Hoback who once danced naked. For two weeks, I was in author heaven.

    Then I returned with my family to California, and the realities of being a full time mom quickly settled back in. This is certainly not a bad thing – it is simply fact. My husband, an engineer who diligently worked while his wife and two sons were away in Wyoming, transitioned from a day shift to a night shift while we were gone. And that meant that upon our return to California, we had some major adjusting to do.

    For a while, all rhythm in our household was lost. Family dinner time was out the door, replaced with family time mid-morning and, if we were lucky, lunch together around the kitchen table.

    Settling back in to life as mom and wife proved harder than I’d expected, coming off of an exhilarating two weeks in my home state where Grandma and Grandpa were always around to help with the boys and where I had plenty of time to wear my writer’s hat. I felt like life as a writer had no choice but to take a backseat for a while. I fought it. I cried. I wondered what the fate of my first published book would ultimately be, if I was not out in the world pushing it for all I was worth.

    I am both a mother and a writer. This means that very often, something’s gotta give.

    The writer Hope Edelman acknowledged her realities as a writer and mother in a blog post on Brevity, sharing a list of what she can and cannot do as a wearer of multiple hats. The advantages? She is really good at budgeting time, and says she has experienced a whole range of emotions that have enhanced her writing. The disadvantages? In her own words, she can’t “spend three months at a writer’s colony … stay at literary events past 9:15 on a weeknight … shower every day … be a foreign correspondent.”

    Because I am a mother and a writer, I can snatch quiet moments as they come. I can multi-task – say, make an important phone call while I’m nursing my three-month-old, jot down an idea for a new essay on the back of a receipt in my three-year-old son’s preschool parking lot, confirm a book sale via email while kids catch five more minutes of TV. I can make two solid, blessed hours of work time pass in the blink of an eye. And, like Edelman, I can garnish loads of heartfelt material from the range of emotions that come with being a mom. Believe me, I have stories to tell.

    And because I am a mother and a writer, I can’t give readings or host writing workshops every day of the week. I can’t tackle my list of marketing ideas fast enough. I can’t blog as much as I want to nor be in conversation with fellow writers and readers as much as I’d like.

    For now, I just have to trust that, as mom and as writer, I am right where I need to be. My book is out. People are reading it, and the feedback is just heartwarming. I am so grateful and so humbled to all of those who have picked up a copy and have taken the time to read it. I hope there will be many more readers to come.

    Seasons come and go in our lives, and I think to some degree a level of chaos is always present. Finally, I feel like I am working my way back into a rhythm where I can wear the hats of both mother and writer, as family woman and book promoter. There’s a lot of work to do. But then again, there always is.

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  6. Beacons

    October 17, 2012 by admin

    There is something beautiful about a power plant lit up at night. A fixture so strong and sure. We fly past the Long Beach plant – solid stacks straddling a canal that leads to the ocean. Yellow light glows from high up, like halos overlooking the city.

    So much about this place feels foreign to me, I have thought time and again in the 15 months that we have lived in California. The coast and the sandy beaches. The lack of seasons. Freeways that never sleep. That feeling of foreignness is heightened now, having returned from a two-week stay in my Wyoming Rockies. That age-old question arises like a deep yawn: What is home? And where?

    But then there are moments like this: pure, raw beauty that tussles us up, reminds us to treasure the present even as we wait on God to direct our future. We know we don’t want to be in California forever. But what gifts are here that we can live in and enjoy while we do call this place home?

    That beckoning light glows. The waves crash against the shore, and I ask a friend who lives on the beach if he sleeps with his windows open at night.

    “You bet,” he says, and I can only imagine.

    When I pull my three-year-old son out of the car at the end of the day, we turn west to a flaming pink sky. “Look at the pretty sun,” I say, and he agrees: it is pretty.

    A new baby and a changed-up work schedule on my husband’s part means we have lost our rhythm for a while. A schedule of any sort is hard to come by, and in the listlessness I have to remind myself of what truly matters: happy and healthy kids, a happy and healthy family. That rhythm will return. This is only a season.

    I watch those sure lights glowing high in the air. It is a beacon of sorts, a landmark by which to stay grounded, oriented. And in my prayers I ask for a beacon for myself, a guiding light to keep me pressing on: as mom, as wife, as writer.

    Like that light, I want to glow, too, strong and sure and unwavering.

    Category Creativity, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Place, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  7. What is Your Life’s Theme?

    September 13, 2012 by katemeadows

    If you could pull one theme out of your life, what would it be?

    For me, that theme is “tough.” As in, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    I didn’t know this when I first set out to write a series of essays profiling the colorful characters of rural western Wyoming around whom I grew up. That series of essays now comprises my first book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press.

    The essays were, at first, quaint and almost fluffy, mere sketches of people and experiences in my life that I found interesting. One piece did not necessarily relate to another; they just sort of fell out of me, one by one, like stones. I knew I had to write them – but I didn’t exactly know why.

    It was a long time before a pattern started to emerge, some sort of thread or echo that started resonating within each piece. I realized I wanted to know how these people – people like big-bellied bachelor Uncle John, the rancher-turned-writer woman named Chris, and my wild and impulsive Grandpa Bucky– helped to shape my upbringing and, consequently, shape the woman I am today.

    The resounding thread? Each of the characters I wrote about exhibited some form of tough. And moreover, they displayed senses of toughness I never felt I had. Having to homestead on a desolate landscape so barren that nothing grew? Not me. Driving cattle home at four in the morning? Not me. Spending lonely winters alone in a boxy cabin miles off a main road? Not me.

    Through writing, I started to look hard at this theme of “tough” and ask myself, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    All of these things, yes. But wasn’t there more to the meaning of that word? If not, I realized, I wasn’t tough at all.

    Except I know I am tough. Just not necessarily in the ways a rural Wyoming life demands. Through writing, I realized that my notion of “tough” was narrow. By holding myself up so sharply against these people who had truly lived hard and noble lives, I had for far too long denied that “tough” badge for myself.

    Looking back on the essays prompted me to examine my life via other questions as well.

    If you could re-do any moment of your life, what would it be?

    If you could live one sweet and precious moment of your past, what would it be?

    Thinking about our lives from a variety of angles can help give us a better grasp on ourselves, who we really are. Peeking through multiple lenses can help us to better understand ourselves – who we have been, who we are, who we hope to become.

    The former New York Times and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen writes: “It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again. It turned out I wasn’t alone in that particular progression.”

    I am not yet 30 years old. As someone once told me, “You’re not old enough to write a memoir.”

    But in writing about my younger self, I discovered a powerful theme at work. It’s a theme that, piggybacked with a theme of confidence, I take with me into the wilds now of motherhood. It’s a theme that is molding me now, and a theme I believe will continue to shape me in the future.

    And all because once, I wanted to write about and therefore recall some colorful and strangely admirable characters of my past.

    Look at how these “tough” people defined me. Because of them – and because of the writing process – I am now tougher and more beautiful, a more complete person.

    You can receive a signed copy of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood here.

    So? What about you? What is your theme?

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Quotes, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  8. Book Publication and Birth: A Tale of Two Converging Loves

    September 4, 2012 by katemeadows

    I never meant for it to happen this way.

    I couldn’t have planned it if I tried.

    Indeed, truth is often stranger than fiction.

    Here I am, though, with a new baby and two books being published this month. Yes, two.

    How? I don’t quite know, except that life happens.

    Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press, recounts my experience as an only child growing up among the raw and grisly characters in rural western Wyoming. It began in 2008 as a collection of essays for my Master’s thesis in creative nonfiction writing. I knew from the get-go I would go all the way with it, writing the pieces one at a time, piecing them together with a thread of a theme (what does it mean to be tough?), and eventually pursuing publication, sending out query after query until a “yes” finally came.

    The “yes” did come – but, unexpectedly, so did a positive pregnancy test, three days later.

    That “yes,” along with the blue “+” sign on the stick, came while I was knee-deep in work on my family’s small business history. Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business, commemorates the grit and determination of a small-town service, repair and retail shop doing whatever it took to survive off of a quiet western main street. I began the project while Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood grinded its way through the query mill, back before a pregnancy was even on the horizon. The business history was a grand effort in helping my family carve out its well-deserved legacy. It was to be for me a venture in self-publishing, my intention to learn the ropes of the trade to be better informed and equipped as a writer during this tumultuous time in the publishing industry. I planned to publish the “Bucky’s book,” as it affectionately came to be called, in June 2012.

    Then the nod came for Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood.

    Then I got pregnant.

    In other words, life happened.

    And here I am, with a baby who was born the end of July, a book of essays to be published on schedule by a traditional publisher, and a self-published small business history that, due to life circumstances, was postponed for release until September – the month of the business’ annual grand open house.

    So we leave next week, traveling from California to Wyoming, where for the better part of the month I will be promoting my work. September will be a crazy month. But I can’t wait.

    I go into it with heart racing and eyes bright with excitement. Here are the moments where the hard, dogged work will be worth it. Finally, I will meet the finished products.  Works of art into which I put my whole self. I will get to talk about this craft I love so much. I get to share words, encourage others to share theirs, and talk about the value of preserving life stories and leaving legacies.

    This is work that I love. I am packing my bags now.

    Please, join me if you can. Click here for a list of events.  Stay tuned for upcoming readings and get-togethers in California. And, if you’re interested in using Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood as a pick for a book group, ordering copies of either book, or learning more about the crafts of creative nonfiction writing and/or telling your own life story, please get in touch.

    Writing, at its very core, is about communication. If I can reach people, if I can inspire and encourage, only then can I smile and say to myself, “Job well done.”

    Category Books, Bookstores, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  9. Life in the Trenches

    August 14, 2012 by katemeadows

    Mark Twain is known to have once said this: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

    When we sit down to write, be it fiction or nonfiction or something entirely different, how important it is that we are cushioned by some life experience. How important it is to our careers as writers that we spend time in the trenches, digging through the dirt and getting dirty, beautifully dirty.

    Copyright 2011, Kate Meadows, southern California.

    I think about this now, as I am deep in the trenches of motherhood and daily trying to find my way through new struggles and questions surrounding life with a new baby and a toddler. Part of me is anxious that my time to write is less, the demands of being mom more.

    But right now, “Mom” is the life part that will inform and is informing my writing. And there are so many themes to explore with that: identity, stereotypes, love. The list goes on.

    Last week, my cousin – who is also a journalist – encouraged me to write from my sweet spot. It’s that spot where you find your life thrumming, where you find the struggles to be had and the lessons to be learned. We had been chatting about our own recent struggles as writers, and mine entailed a potential story for Highlights Magazine that had fallen through. I suspect the magazine’s editor had turned down the piece because she saw through the curtain: there wasn’t an ounce of passion in it.

    In other words, I had pitched an idea and written a story about something that did not at all inspire me, a topic I knew something about but had little connection to at this stage in my life. And I was pitching it to an audience with which I have little experience and, admittedly, little desire to reach.

    I am not a children’s writer.

    The story lacked the zest it needed because I was reaching too far for it. I wasn’t writing from that sweet spot.

    Admittedly, the sweet spot, that place where I find I have so much to explore and process and so much learning to do, is not easy. But it is necessary.

    Copyright 2011, Kate Meadows, southern California.

    It is necessary for me to grow, both as a person and as a writer. I am hard at work in the trenches, drumming up some good old life experience that I hope will make for some sparkling words and killer story ideas later.

    Can you imagine what would happen to your writing if you didn’t get out and live a little, if you rode only the ripples of your ocean as opposed to the crashing waves?

    Take time to write, always. But always, too, take time to live and to fully experience the moments – the great ones, the hard ones, and all of the ones in between.

    Category Creativity, Family, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Quotes, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | 6 Comments

  10. Slow Motion?

    August 7, 2012 by katemeadows

    I forget how the pace of life slows in the breathy moments of adjusting to a new baby. Moments – on life’s grand scale, that is what they are, fleeting ticks of the clock that will pass in and out, and life will go on. Already time is moving fast – our Elijah Owen is almost two weeks old, and my husband, my sweet and giving husband who has poured himself out in servanthood this week, will be returning to work soon.

    Time. One of the many paradoxes of motherhood. How can the minutes slug away and fly by at the same time?

    Life resumes here. Slowly we must ease ourselves into a new normal. There are sad moments and confusing moments, funny moments and ecstatic moments. I look back on little Eli’s birth with a sort of muddy joy. Always I will remember how Bryan and I played gin rummy as we passed away the afternoon hours in the big hospital room, pausing for contractions as they passed. I will remember how the doctor came in and broke my water with what had to be chop sticks, saying something about speeding the process along. She was in and out of our room so fast, and the rush of hormones and fear overtook me, and I remember thinking (not for the first time that day) how odd it is that an act or a thought done out of routine or convenience for one person can be something entirely momentous and huge for another.

    I remember how the evening hours of July 25 passed so quickly, so fluidly, both Bryan and I thinking our baby would be here within the next hour, every hour. How, at 8:00, her hurried down to the hospital cafeteria to grab a bit and hurried straight back, knowing his son could be here at any time. How I finally started pushing at 10:30 that night and how, at a quarter to midnight, I had to stop, because it was time for the doctor and the doctor was in the room next door delivering another baby. How four babies came that night within 15 of each other, and how we were third in line. Eli was the only boy born in the hospital that night.

    And he came, beautiful and wet and big. His body was hot and alien on my stomach. I couldn’t see his face at first, but I didn’t care. He came. He was here, and that’s all that mattered. He made a July 25 birthday by two minutes; he was born at 11:58 p.m., 8 pounds 6 ounces and 21 inches long. And when I did see his face for the first time – smoke blue eyes and tiny pink mouth and shock of dark hair – I cried. Because he was mine, and he was beautiful.

    Now the days pass, some moments quietly and other moments chaos, as what once was a family of three gets used to being a family of four. A million questions linger and yes, sleep is a sweet sweet thing. But this job of parenthood is in full swing. It’s intense and tough and messy. But it is worth every minute.

    Welcome, sweet baby.

    Category Family, Family History, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,, | 12 Comments

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