Gratitude

Alright, I'm officially over whining my way through this pregnancy. I am so grateful that you have all unflinchingly listened to my litany of sorrows, but honestly, enough is enough.

I am lucky.

First, with the pregnancy. Yes, I've had some aches and pains and so on, but I have not been placed on bed rest, have not had life-threatening complications, my blood pressure is something absurd like 98 over 59. My ankles are not swollen, my ultrasound looked great and the baby's heart rate has stayed at a constant and cool 140ish for the last month. He's a cool dude, with a nice left hook and a penchant for using my cervix as a trampoline. No underweight, NICU needing babe in this belly.

As this guy didn't listen to my plan for an arrival two to three weeks ahead of his due date, I've had some time to reflect. I am 39, which has given me some serious bouts of fear during this pregnancy. But what will be, will be. I think fear has been a bit behind my whining. But no more. I'm somewhat afraid that we haven't come up with the perfect name yet. Although we may have - we have to meet the little guy to know for sure what to call him.

Second, I am just plain lucky with my health. I've been engaging and hearty and long debates about health care with as many reticent conservatives as possible. I have on occasion shook with anger at the stories from people unable to obtain medical care or rendered bankrupt because of the cost of healthcare. I am ashamed that we don't take care of our citizens, that through the practices of our government we prioritize corporate financial health far above human health. Last night I was going through the last 5 years of medical and insurance records in preparation for kissing Anthem/Blue Cross as our insurance company goodbye. For as little as my family has needed medical attention, there sure has been a lot of paperwork and a lot of battling with our insurance company for coverage of those very few and minor appointments. This year I've seen my surgeon once and Sawyer had stitches and that's the extent of our medical visits (other than the midwives, of course). We have been blessed with great health, and we work hard at staying healthy. We've been lucky to not have major issues beyond our control. So lucky. But there are plenty of people who aren't, and who's to know when one of those people might be one of us. That fight for health care reform in our country is by no means abstract for me. It feels like it could be a life and death fight for any of us at any time. How lucky that we finally have a president brave enough to be pushing the issue to the forefront.

Third, I am so grateful for the life I have: two healthy children who make my heart swell with pride, a wonderful (and healthy) husband who always takes my breath away with my realization of love for him, and my sense of being a team. Employment. A home. Working vehicles. A wonderful community full of friends who never stop asking how they can help, never stop dropping off hand me downs or making me laugh. There is nothing in my life I can take for granted, from parents whose generosity in providing opportunities to celebrate together is constant and so appreciated, to siblings whose love and support is constant. Actually, I think I could take these things for granted, but I refuse. I am far too grateful, too aware of how precious they are and of how rare they are.

This little guy may take his time in emerging into this amazing and tumultuous world, but I am resolved to enjoy the last of it experiencing a healthy pregnancy, the wonder of new life inside of me, the anticipation of my children and community and family ready to welcome him however and whenever he arrives with arms and hearts wide open.

A week or two ago, Jordan was very frustrated with her brother at bath time and she marched him into the bathroom and into the tub and made him listen to her read the book "Peaceful Piggy Meditation." Pretty soon the bath and the book had them in a wonderful place and they left it half unread on the floor. I'm not sure what the inspiration was this morning, but as I was taking a shower, they came in and read the rest of it together. I realize so much of the amazing lessons and moments of wonder are given to me courtesy of my children. This is just the latest. From the littlest. My life is far more full of blessings than of troubles, far more full of comfort than of discomfort. And I am so, so grateful for it all. What joyful abundance.

What Not to Say to a Pregnant Woman

It's fascinating to be looked at in horror. When you're simply shopping at the grocery store. This expression is seen almost exclusively on the faces of men and teenagers.

Women wince. When dropping off children at school, stooping to get mail from the mailboxes on the corner. Especially ones who have been there. Such is the affect a woman in her final days of pregnancy has on other people.

It is a common belief that there is a significant amount of forgetting that goes along with delivery - you forget the depth of the pain or else you wouldn't have more than one. You forget the exhaustion and discomfort and indignities of pregnancy. But there are some things you just shouldn't ever forget: honestly - a woman who has given birth before should not for any reason ask an expectant mother "When's that baby coming?" Because you never have any freaking idea. And that one fact perhaps chafes more than any other in the final weeks. Unless you have a C section scheduled, that baby will come when it comes. Which is why I think of the final stage of pregnancy as simply giving in. Like the Wicked Witch of the East and her skywriting message of "Surrender, Dorothy", that baby will not come out until you relinquish any notion of control over the process.

But my surrender is only to the process and the baby. What I will not surrender is my right to punch in the face the next man who tells me "Whoa! You're gonna pop!" (Gee, thanks. I was feeling so svelte.) If I could pop, that might provide instantaneous relief. Instead I know ahead of me lies hours of contractions. Followed by pushing from a rather small place in my body a rather large being. Rarely a "pop" to be heard unless some kind soul has provided bedside champagne service. The sound of breaking a man's nose with a loud, satisfying "pop" would allow for a modicum of relief, however. And if tried pregnant, I can't see a male judge (afraid of what might make the belly actually explode) or a female judge (both estrogen and empathy begin with e) rendering a verdict of guilty.

So please, don't ask me if he's coming soon because not soon enough is the only right answer, and people like to associate a big round belly with being jolly, not with being snippy and bitchy. Don't ask me how I feel because the only answer is pregnant. (I always feel a bit more honest in the negativity of my responses around teenagers as I feel it provides them with birth control motivation versus that fairytale falsehood they sometimes imbue pregnancy with.) And it doesn't come out sounding positive. Don't tell me I'm going to pop, point out that I'm huge, or make a face or do something you think might make you seem funny and witty like step back with your hands up and a look of horror on your face. I love the honesty of women who allow me my grumpiness and discomfort. I can't stand the women who told me how much they loved being pregnant.

I of course never mind the women who tell me I look amazing or beautiful and that the only place I've gained an ounce is my belly. If you tell me the baby hasn't yet dropped I am liable to drop on top of you to see if it might change your mind. If I have never met you before, it is not your place to recommend stimulating my nipples to me while gesturing at my chest with your unfamiliar hands. Nausea and vomiting can occur in the last trimester after all. Don't tell me I've picked a lousy time of year to have a baby because it's not like I can change it and it's also not true - there's not a bad time to have a baby. Don't tell me that your neighbor almost died in childbirth, in detail about the horrors of each of your births with the attitude that no one has ever suffered as much as you did. Remind me of the joy of the new baby, laugh with me at the indignities of the process, and tell me you are certain it'll all go smoothly and quickly. I might just let you live.

Disclaimer: I've been told the humor in this entry may be somewhat harder to find. I love it (for real) when my friends and family make jokes about my pregnancy, my size, etc. THey are excluded form What Not to Say. After all, it was my very own daughter who told me a couple of months ago, " It's funny, mama, but it kinda seems like when your belly gets bigger your bootie gets bigger, too." xoxo

The Best Dog Ever

This is a post I don't want to write, never thought I'd ever have to write. After all, if you are lucky enough to have the best dog ever, you kind of think that immortality is one of the conditions. But what's always made Austin so special isn't some collection of superpowers but just his basic, well, humanity. He turns twelve in December and we thought he'd last a few more years beyond that. He spent about seven or eight years as a puppy, after all, and didn't start showing his age until this year. He's such a big beauty of a dog that his declining health is deceptive - his thick, lush coat that I cursed at often enough during the twelve shedding seasons a year hides weight loss stylishly. And he's always been mellow, so when he got really, really mellow it didn't seem so dramatic. Mostly, though, our inability to really see his deterioration has more to do with denial than anything else. Life without Austin has never been conceivable since life with Austin began.

When Tom and I had just been dating for a few months, we still lived in separate places. He was visiting me in LA and we made a rare trip to a mall, this one in Santa Monica, to buy him some new clothes. An unusual experience as anyone who knows Tom will understand. Up on the second floor of the mall we were drawn to a woman petting a puppy in a milk crate on a bench. We approached and she told us that a homeless woman owned him and told her she was going to take him up into the hills to let him live with all the other animals as he was getting too big to hide in her backpack when she went into the shelter at night. This woman, Jenny, was trying to convince the homeless woman (whom I recognized from the street outside the bar where I worked in Santa Monica) to give her the puppy. She didn't want another dog, but she didn't want this one to be "set free" in the mountains, either. One look at the damp puppy in the crate told why: clearly underfed with mange evident on his ears and a candy necklace for a collar, he'd be a quick snack for a coyote or a mountain lion. He cocked his head to one side with one ear up and one folded down, and looked at us with his huge eyes, and that was it. He owned us.

A mall security guard emerged and began harassing the homeless woman, and in her paranoia she grabbed the milk crate and fled. We'd been at the scene for an hour or so and all three of us followed the woman out into the dampness of an early February day on the open Santa Monica walking mall. Jenny told us she was going to follow the woman and try to get the puppy from her. If she was successful, she said, we could pick him up the next day at the animal shelter.

Having been somewhat non-committal about everything in our lives 'til then - we were after all an actress dating a seasonal river guide - this was a big deal. We showed up early at the shelter and were disappointed to not have the puppy listed anywhere on the intake sheet. Turning to walk out we saw a sign: "Heather and Tom: Call Jenny: 999-9999". We looked at each other, took the sign and repaired to the tailgate of Tom's truck to talk about it. After a half an hour spent listing all the reasons we shouldn't do it, Tom said "Oh, who are we kidding. If we weren't going to do this we wouldn't have spent all this time talking about it." We drove to Jenny's and when we walked through the door, Austin looked up at us and promptly peed all over the floor. We were in love.

We shared custody of Austin that spring until we moved in together in Groveland. We had a crate for him in Los Angeles and a runner on the deck of the Groveland Guide House. He had a penchant for chasing deer and eating cow poop. He would have graduated first in his dog training class but missed the last session after being hit by a car on the highway, crossing to get at a deer carcass on the other side of the road. Tom and I were both runners, and he was the perfect running dog, tireless and joyful and always game despite the weather. He trained with me for four marathons and when I got pregnant with Jordan when he was five he suddenly became protective of me, standing in front of me rather than behind me when a strange dog or person approached. He paced outside or lay as close to me as he could during the birth of both children, and so it's been unusual for him not to be following me around this time.

Austin was the first real grownup thing I did. And twelve years later I sit in the house I own with two children and one on the way, a business we own, and a whole trail of adult decisions I've made and commitments I've kept lining the path to this point in my life. Austin taught me to be an adult because he was the first thing I committed to in my adult life (Tom was a given - we were in it together from the beginning whether we admitted it or not - Austin was the fist clear evidence of this). He was the first thing I really had to take care of and take responsibility for. I remember in that conversation on the tailgate of the truck Tom saying "Dogs live for a long time. This is a long term commitment." And now it seems not nearly long enough.

Maybe it's because of his presence all through my "real" adult life that I feel sort of scared looking at the rest of it without him. He was there for the birth of Jordan and Sawyer and now will likely not be here for the third child. He taught them both to walk and endured plenty of abuse at both their tiny hands without ever treating them with anything but gentleness. He spent five years living at a campground near a river and now that our home is a couple hundred yards down the road, he thinks it's still his home despite the "No Dogs, No Exceptions" signs.

He's accompanied us on river trips, camping trips, hiking trips, road trips. I was looking for pictures on him in my computer album and was somewhat amazed: there were lots of pictures taken of him until we had kids, then fewer and fewer. But in every picture we do have, Austin is always in the background. Even if you can't see him in the picture, you know he's there: just off to the side in photos of the kids playing outside or at the park, lying somewhere close while we open Christmas presents. He's there in every one. And I hope that's how it feels when he's gone. Because his absence would be unendurable. I want him always just off to the side. His gentle, loving presence always a part of our family. I know he'll be with me on every run or walk I go on.

Update:

I was of course sobbing my heart out when I wrote this post, the vet having told us not to wait too long to bring him in to be put to sleep. But then he began to eat lunchmeat, his dog food prepared the way we made it when he was a puppy recovering from the health horrors of his early months: with egg, milk and olive oil added. He began first to wag his tail just a bit more, to gain a little weight, some of the redness in his eyes to reduce, and to want to go outside in the full moon to bark at the phantoms. He's following me around and keeping Nala in line, and we are so grateful to have him with us for however long we're granted this reprieve. It's taught us a good lesson of not taking anything or anyone for granted, for taking the time to give the ones you love a little scratch behind the ears. It's made me more gentle in training Nala, and more grateful for all the blessings I have in my life. Maybe Austin does have superpowers after all.

Fluid Logic

Summers in Lotus are such a study in contrast: the heat of the day and the infalliable coolness of the night, the baking dry heat of each clear blue day, and the stunning icy cold of the river to bring you back to joy. 

Ok, I'm pregnant, so the heat/cold thing seems to be taking an awful lot of my consciousness despite the fact that this is easily the mildest summer I've ever felt here. But there is plenty of other contrast in the summer as well - the rush and hurry of getting to swim team, doing a shuttle, leading the children to sleep before the dragon scales show all the way through their skin. And the ultimate contrast, life and death.

A death occurred on the river this summer and it amazes me how it brings back into stark focus what exactly it is we do, what a great leap of faith it is. The death on the river was a tragic accident, no one to be blamed, no one to be punished, plenty to be learned by all. A passenger fell out of a boat in a place where daily tens of people fall out of their boats. I have swum this particular rapid a couple of times, and know people who have done it in rafts, duckies, tubes, riverboards, kayaks and pool toys. We took our children on it early this summer for their first time. They loved it. The man who died was rafting with a good organization who were running the river with excellent safety procedures in place. No one to blame.

And yet he died. And every day we offer people the opportunity to raft this same rapid, to trust us, our equipment, our guides, their judgement. And we can never promise them safety because, as we tell our children, you alone are responsible for your body. We can control only so much, and then we give it up to faith. And hope. 

When the accident happened, Tom went and studied the pictures to find out exactly what happened. He went to the rapid at low water to see what the rocks looked like. He brought our crew to the rapid to show them where and why and how and to remind them that it is a matter of life and death, this guiding job. And he mourned. 

I was reminded why this occupation is a perfect one for him: because he cares about it so much, believes in it so much, and takes on the responsibility of it completely. And because he loves the magic it creates for people who choose to raft it, and he loves the people who choose that magic. He's never been bored on the South Fork and I'd trust him to guide me on any river he deemed runnable. He finds the fun, the joy, the beauty, the adventure in it every single day. I know there is not another company owner or manager who chooses to guide the river every possible chance just to be a part of that joy. He gives it that respect, and he also gives it it's due as a place where tragedy can happen. Every summer he falls in love with the river and every summer I fall in love with that part of him again as well. 

Sometimes I forget that I used to be a guide, that I spent four solid summers constantly on the water taking boat after boat of passengers down. This unwieldy pregnant body seems in contrast to the one people entrusted their lives and their children's lives to. I forget until a passenger comes back, telling a story about the last time they were on the river and I realize I was their guide and we laugh that there's been a picture of me and them in the middle of a rapid on their mantle for the last seven years. I have to remind myself to own that part of my past, to let it be a part of the mom I am now.  We don't have many pictures of us on the river: it's something so normal, so common an occurrence. We don't take pictures of ourselves going to work or to school, doing the everyday things.

On days off that used to be rare but are all to plentiful in this summer of recession, we choose the river: blowing up a raft (loosening the life vest straps another inch each week) and going through the motions to travel three miles on water with our children and friends on Class II riffles. We are always different at the end than we were at the beginning, always glad we made the effort, took the time.

Because there is an inexplicable magic to a river. And it takes my breath away each and every day I spend in it, next to it, on it. The kids and I do shuttles three or four times a week and it's inevitable that we wind up in the river each time. Usually we plan for it, wearing swimsuits to take-out and following the winding down of summer through the waning depth of the reservoir, each day a steeper and longer climb down to the water. Sometimes it's a surprise on a morning shuttle: its still cool when we leave the house and by the time the boats are blown up and the safety talk is happening, we're at least partially immersed. 

Camp Lotus is our favorite, of course, our second home. The kids have learned to swim on the shallow banks there, moving gradually into the current whose power they know to respect. At the end of a day I show up on it's banks tired and hot and all too often grouchy and am rebirthed instantly each time I jump in as it washes away the heat, the exhaustion, the stress and leaves me cooled down and blissed out and back in the moment. The joy floods back into my consciousness and I am grateful and awestruck at what an amazing place I live in, how lucky my children are to have these summers of  raw bliss, of endless fun with friends making sand castles, imagining and playing out great characters and stories, and swimming in water that is theirs only for a moment before rushing on. 

"Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy." Edward Abbey, The Hidden Canyon - A River Journey

The Heart Outside Your Body

We live in this fabulous oasis of a community: the river is the heart of it, flowing straight through the middle: we have friends on both sides and with all it's twists and turns and bridges, it's only from the river you really get an idea of the lay of the land. Parcels are generally five acre minimums, close enough to feel neighborly but not crowded and so it feels wild - especially with campgrounds and nature reserves and amazing walking, biking and hiking trails on Conservancy dedicated land patchworked through. There are tangles of wildflowers and trees, wild animals and wild locals and it's a place so special thousands of tourists visit each year. It's an amazing place to raise a child.

And a terrible place to lose one.

Even prefacing this with the fact that there is a happy ending can't eliminate the knife-in-stomach fear for the parents I tell it to - maybe it's the fact that they can so easily transpose their own child into the story, that because of how tight knit (despite the five acre parcels) we are, they know me or my daughter well enough to feel what we felt.

There is a beautiful campground across the river and down a few miles from where we have our river company. One of our groups was camping there and so we were there for two nights and two mornings cooking dinner and breakfast. A simple path skirts the campground from upper parking lot to the campsites to the river access to the outdoor kitchen and dining area. Probably an eighth of a mile in total. The property bordering it upstream is a lovely local hiking area with a simple 1.1 mile trail that meanders along the river for a few hundred yards. The whole area is easily identifiable as former mining territory with rock tailings piled into meandering raised beds easily construed as paths. Animals or humans have carved more definable paths into the piles and the possible diversions for exploration are endless. Especially for a curious six year-old. On the first night, Jordan and Sawyer meandered down a path together and were just identifying that they were indeed lost when Tom found them. We had a good talk about being lost and what to do and not do, and there seemed to have been just enough of and edge to the experience to keep them wary of future wanderings. But Hansel and Gretel left out the part about what happens when there's the roiling emotions of a six year old in transition involved.

Two mornings later we were back and having refereed a fight about a dandelion that came out to Sawyer's benefit, my daughter was sulking and gave only a pouty nod to my "breakfast in five minutes" guideline. Eight minutes later I wandered the trail while nibbling a piece of cantaloupe, fully expecting her to appear and join me in a quick resolution of her emotions on the walk back to breakfast. On round two I made a wider loop, beginning to foray onto the potential trailheads, and increasing quite noticeably the volume of my calls despite the early hour. Round three I picked up Sawyer, now long done with his breakfast and asked him to show me the "secret hiding place" they'd discovered in case she was silently ignoring my calls. (I'm thinking of surgically attaching a GPS unit to the poor child. It wasn't a helpful endeavor and we both have poison oak in spots.) We made it all the way to the adjacent hiking trail and knowing he wasn't going to manage the one mile loop with any speed I was bringing him back and intending to go back for round four, the now worried guides joining in the search. Suddenly some one called "Here she is, Heather."

Running up the road, I found my crying daughter attached to the hand of a lovely twenty-something woman, blond and athletic and looking quite eerily the picture of who my daughter could be in another fifteen years. She had indeed found her on the adjacent trail. "She was sobbing," said the angelic young woman in running shoes and shorts, "she was so sad It made me tear up. But at least she knew where she was supposed to be so I walked her back here." There were tears in the poor woman's eyes and after hugging Jordan I shook her hand and then enveloped her in a hug. She had rescued my daughter, and even in her strong and able and youthful invincibility she connected so clearly to that feeling of loss and of being lost that I felt a ping of sadness for her, thinking already she could see through to this side of parenthood: the possibility of loss. Or maybe it was her empathy for Jordan that caused her tears, a connectedness still to childhood - she was a perfect figure to bridge mother and daughter, whatever her experience.


Never have my feelings been so conflicted about my daughter and what to show her. But her fear was palpable enough. I don't have to write what I said: its the same script any parent would have for a found child, the same one for when my mother found my sister who had lost herself purposefully at about the same age in our living room curtains, more terrified to give herself up to the crime of which I'd promised to tattle on her for than to answer the calls of my mother. When the police cars with their flashing lights showed up, her eyes grew wider and her confusion greater: were they there to punish her for her crime or to help to find her? I can see the confusion now in my mother's eyes, the flood of relief and the anger: I love you so much I could kill you for scaring me so with the potential of your loss.

The morning didn't turn magically into one of seamless redemption - clearly I'm no Ma Ingalls. My frayed nerves and the over-tiredness of both my children translated into an escalation of emotion. After a fight between the two of them over a cookie in the Camp Lotus store brought us to a pinnacle, I called my own mother to confess my sore throat from yelling at my children. And got to feel her fear and pain mirroring my own: after all, she loves my daughter, and she knows me now as both a mother and a daughter. I'm so filled with gratitude she's there for me to talk to. At these moments I so clearly still need a mama of my own.

These are the times when you connect with the comment "I aged five years in that moment," and yet you swear to yourself that you will never die of old age (no matter how quickly they cause it) or anything else: after all, you have to stick around for the rest of their lives to protect them. Raising children seems such a delicate balance: loving them so much you never want them out of your sight (much less your house), and at the same time allowing them the independence and strength to become their own person. Likely one who will be driven crazy by you just as much as they drive you crazy and so you will want them to fly on their independent wings as wonderfully high as they possibly can.

After just a few weeks of being a mother, I was walking bleary-eyed and in shock around my small cabin and picked up a tiny book on motherhood someone had attached to a gift. This small quote brought me to my knees in its profundity even at that stage: "Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." - Elizabeth Stone

Growing From Seed

My true nature as an annoying optimist is never more apparent than when I am in the garden. Given the potential for frustration, it is amazing (my husband might have another name for it) that I continue to try. But there is no better balm for my soul than gardening. Plus, it's one heck of a great place to spend time with the kids. In the glorious rain we actually had this May, the children spent hours getting soggy and absolutely covered in mud, rejoicing in each and every worm they found, diligently pulling up weed after weed, dropping seed after hopeful seed into the finger holes I made, or scattering handfuls like wishes, lined up in careful rows.

Last year was the year of the mole and gopher (no Chinese calendar here, this was a hostile takeover). Tom, either in defeat or what I'd rather see as undaunted support built me eight gorgeous raised beds this winter and spring. We have a lovely harvest of onions in our pantry now, and seedlings popping up in every one, unthreatened by burrowing rodents. In all that garden space still left, however, are three rows of corn, an archway of peas, many rows of cutting flowers, and the cabbage, broccoli and chard left over from the winter plantings. (One less corn plant as of yesterday, actually, and one new gopher hole. I'm thinking of not feeding the cats for a few weeks to make them a little more inspired.)

This year we've had the most unbelievable harvests of strawberries - at least a pint a day, and those are what make it into the baskets. My children are pink-lipped and finger tipped and thriving on extra vitamin C. But two days ago while picking, we noticed an infestation of black beetles on a plant. And a new war was waged. Sawyer joined me in the garden yesterday while Jordan was at school, dressed in his latest uniform of shorts and cowboy boots, and armed with a squirt bottle of soapy water. For thirty minutes he diligently and thoroughly sprayed every strawberry plant. And then last night the skies opened and washed clean each and every leaf. So we'll see who comes back. But, to my great joy, my children love being in the garden with me, and I love not having my iPod on, hearing instead the tinkling noises of their words and laughter, the exclamations of excitement, the sounds of their little hoes pinging off the rock hard dirt.

On the way back into the house yesterday, Sawyer called out from ten feet back, "Is this the same snake from before?" and I turned to see him holding a small, curved unmistakably snake body, definitely not the 3 foot long roadkill garter snake brought onto the property and enjoyed by the kids by the previous week. "Sawyer, put down the snake and step away while mama sees what kind it is, okay?" Running, keeping the fear out of my voice. It's a half of a snake, a garter again, it's head devoured either by a cat or the mower. As we walk towards the house together, Sawyer says "The snake is a little bit sad because it doesn't have a head anymore. But it's okay because we still love it." My children often take my breath away with examples of their kind and nurturing hearts. True gardeners from their souls on up.

The Voices In My Head

I am a podcast junkie. A truth which is not borne out by the fact that I haven't listened to most of my favorite ones in months. Just listening to NPR in the mornings has become an exercise in futility, much of that due to a certain three year old who has rediscovered the word "why", and the fact that no matter how silent it might be in the car with each child happily engaged in their own activity, the minute I answer the phone (on bluetooth, of course!) or turn on the radio, I am beseiged by a barrage of questions or the sudden need for my immediatel inclusion in whatever game of pretend is the flavor of the day. So I try to connect with a more erudite outside world via podcast when I am folding laundry at 10 pm or weeding the garden at 7am. But all too often lately there's a lot of competition going on even inside my own head for the direct attention of whoever it is who's hand is on the steering wheel.

There's the mama voice that frets over whether that cough is worsening, whether we're doing too many activities or too few, whether there are enough playdates, too much car time, and especially whether or not particular behavioral issues stem directly from my own personal character flaws. 

There's the noise about money and work and employment and health insurance and IRA's and 529's and car repairs and kids shoes. 

Even the latent actress in me occasionally makes her presence known, stamping her foot and asking petulantly when it's going to be HER turn again. 

The blog writer and poet and story author provides a constant background monologue, replete with snarky and hilarious comments but rarely breaking surface at the right time to make contact with me when I'm in front of the keyboard with enough energy to write it all down.

There's the massage therapist, the raft company owner, the daughter, sister, friend - oh, and the wife, each with their issues, concerns, responsibilities and desires that need addressing. And I desperately want to give each my full and undivided attention, but generally I can't find it anywhere. It seems irrevocably fractured. 

Strangest of all for me is that fact that there is actually, really, another person living inside of me. Not just close to me or next to me but INSIDE. And it's the most silent one of all. This person is with me all day every day and I know the least about him than anyone else in my world. It really is an amazing act of faith.  We didn't do any of the testing available to check his chromosomes or terrify us with things that may or may not be wrong with him - we did an ultrasound that we felt would tell us adequately if he had anything drastically wrong enough so as to be visible.

 So there he is - inside of me - kicking the small hands of Jordan as she feels for his movements before falling asleep each night, receiving the kisses Sawyer bestows regularly on my belly. There is the voice inside my head that frets about what he might or might not be like, twinned with the delicious anticipation of his arrival and how lucky he will be to have Jordan and Sawyer as his siblings. Tom makes lists of potential names for him and his smile every time he looks at my belly is all the reassurance I need that whatever joys or challenges this person presents, we'll face them together.

My mind can seem so fractured sometimes as to make that little core of me feel crowded out by all the simultaneous conversations. But those few times on trips that I have had a longer stretch of time to myself, I find that it can be the silence itself that is deafening: it's the chorus of my family (and the voices) that lets me know where - and who - I am.