The Right Words

The other night, I could not sleep. When exhaustion drives you to bed by 9:30 but you're awake again by 11, you know it's going to be a bad night. And it was. Apparently it was a bad night for my husband too...maybe because I was tossing and turning relentlessly? He got up before me, around 3, I think. I stayed in bed until 4 and surrendered to the inevitable. That's how we found ourselves huddled by the woodstove around 4:15 in the morning talking about how to negotiate our lives, juggle the labor, help our family and each other survive this upcoming transition.

In the midst of this conversation, he started playing with one of our cats, Smudgie, enticing him with a string. It was one of those surreal moments, being awake so early, trying to figure out life, while the cat rolled and batted and acted goofy. Cats. Lovely creatures without a care in the world, and always good for a little levity and distraction. That morning, the levity brought back a memory.

The summer I was seven years old, I met my epic friend. Our families were at a barbecue, and our brothers introduced us. She was the only other little girl at the party, perhaps the only other child my age. I don't remember. Most of the families there had children my brothers' age -- in other words, not children at all, but teens and young adults. Like me, this girl was the surprise in her family. Her brothers were eight and ten years older than her; mine, ten and twelve years older than me. One of my brothers was friends with one of hers, and they thought we should meet.

The trouble was that both of us were shy, painfully so. So our brothers stood there, telling us about each other, and we stood there, giggling like goofballs, unable to say a word. It looked like this meeting might go nowhere, until I finally piped up and said, "Want to play with the cats?" And that was it.

We've been friends for more than three decades. Through dolls and silly sleepovers, painful adolescent moments, first boyfriends, choir trips and youth retreats, college, life in the city (complete with giant roaches!), first real jobs, marriage, babies, businesses, and more, we have seen each other through. We have oddly parallel lives, and somehow we reflect and interpret reality for each other. She has three girls, essentially the same ages as my boys. Her first, born a month to the day after mine; her last, born six weeks before mine. Well, before this very last one, of course. These days, when she calls, my husband says to her: "So, are you pregnant yet?" Because really, this pregnancy of mine brings us to the greatest divergence of our realities.

I am certain that I have all the greatest friends on this earth, that no one is as fortunate as me in the friends department. Beautiful, wonderful women. Interesting, unique, and true. I don't know what I would do without them. But this friendship is altogether one-of-a-kind, perhaps because neither of us has sisters and we have known each other for so long. For most of our childhoods, she was the bolder of the two of us, and she overcame her shyness long before I overcame mine. But I like to remember that our friendship got its start because I found the words to get it on its way. I would not be me without her, and that our friendship hinges on a cat and her kittens at a summer backyard barbecue somehow makes it all the sweeter.

Classic

Yesterday I started the merry-go-round of testing that will make up the last trimester of this pregnancy. Trips to the doctor's office two or three times a week, depending on the week. If you can believe such a thing.

WARNING: Unless you live a life of ease with no responsibilities whatsoever, do not get pregnant in your forties. Just don't do it people! Not only do they tell you scary things and require insane amounts of additional medical care, you will be exhausted. Trust me, I know. Pregnancy is way harder this time around.

Every Monday until this guy's birthday, I will go for a biophysical profile (BPP), which is a fancy term for an ultrasound where they measure certain things -- mainly (I think) fluid levels as well as the baby's muscle tone, growth, and practice breaths. On Thursdays, I will go for non-stress tests, hooked up to the monitor that you wear during labor that measures contractions as well as the heartbeat and who knows what else. Every other Friday I visit the doctor. It feels like a bit much. C'est la vie. My husband says I should be grateful for good medical care. I am certain he is right. I'm working on the gratitude thing, trying not to fret about the time that all of this takes.

The important news is that this little fellow passed his test yesterday with flying colors. But what made the whole thing just a classic representation of my life is that the ultrasound tech couldn't get any pictures of his face. Instead I walked out of there with a picture of his forearm and a very powerful-looking fist as well as a good shot of his butt and well...yes, his balls. If I'd had any doubts (which I really didn't) about his gender, I don't anymore. This one is all boy, in personality and more.

Tears

Historically speaking, I haven't been much for crying. Years can go by. I can be sad, upset, or depressed, but the tears don't really come. Sometimes, yes. But more often than not...not.

But this pregnancy has changed all of that. I started crying before I even knew I was pregnant. I couldn't figure out what exactly was wrong with me. And then...well...then I found out. So now I am undone by things, big and small. I cry and cry. One of my dear friends says that she is grateful to this little fellow for enabling me to cry. She suggested that perhaps when he grows up, he will be the kind of person that others will feel safe to cry with. A lovely thought. I hope he is that kind of person.

I really love Guster's music, and the other day my husband realized that the song "Two at a Time" is a song referring to Noah and the flood. He showed me the lyrics and played the song. Here are a few of the lyrics:

Once upon a time,
For the Lord the skies they parted;
So a few must die
To bring us back to where we started.

CHORUS:
Two at a time,
Two at a time,
Two at a time,
Two at a time,
Do what you're told.

Each and every kind were gathered up,
This tiny boat - the future of the world.
For those that drowned, it made no sense;
They should have known, because we told them so.

I listened to the song and read the words...and cried. I'm not even sure why. Except for the fact that it had been a terrible week. I was feeling vulnerable and tired, and those lyrics broke my heart somehow. I thought of those animals, innocent of the wickedness that plagued mankind, and how they had to die anyway. I thought of the way that God devised a great plan -- the future of the world in a tiny boat. A great plan, yes, but loss and death were an inescapable part of it.

Suffering, loss, and redemption, an endless cycle, and the tears just kept coming.

Sleep

I've always been someone who could sleep. I've also always been someone who can get up early and actually feel awake. Both are a blessing. But in the past month in particular, sleep hasn't been going so well. I often wake up at three in the morning and find I just can't sleep. I try so hard not to let my mind wander to things it shouldn't...namely, all the things I'm worried about...and I often manage to push those thoughts aside, but still it takes forever to drift back to sleep. I try to pray. And I do, but my mind wanders and my body sends me little annoying updates. My back hurts. I have to go to the bathroom. Again. I'm thirsty. Again. I have to roll over. Again. Too bad I'm trapped between my husband and the dog, and the blankets feel like tethers. The baby kicks. Again and again. And I wonder whether he's actually nocturnal and will be awake through the night after he's out here with us, breathing air. I wonder.

Eventually I either realize that I will not be going back to sleep, like tonight (or, I guess, this morning), so I turn off my alarm and get up. Or at some point I realize that sleep may come, so I turn off my alarm to avoid being awakened in an hour or two. Either way, it's no good. The day will be disrupted in some way or another. More things I simply cannot control. This seems to be the lesson that life offers me. I'm not sure whether it's the lesson I'm supposed to learn.

But what does all of this really mean anyway? This baby is an awfully good reason not to sleep. I know. And I can get up and get a glass of water. I can work. I can turn on the news, as I've done this morning, and see just how fortunate I am.

Haiti is a disaster. Pat Robertson says that in the 1700s the Haitians made a pact with the devil, and that's why their lives are such a disaster and they suffer so unspeakably. I have no idea whether any of that is true. But I know that Haiti is the most desperately poor country in the western hemisphere, and I'm pretty sure they need help and compassion instead of some finger-pointing at their ancestors. Ugh. Why can't Christians ever keep their mouths shut and just let their compassion and generosity do the talking? Like that quote attributed to St. Francis: "Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary."

Time Is Short

This morning it hit me that this baby is coming. Soon. For so long it's been out there in time, a date far in the future. Now, not so much. This little dude is coming. It doesn't matter what's happening in our lives, or how ill prepared I may feel, or that we'll just have to wedge him and his crib in somewhere. He's not interested in or bothered by the obstacles or our own state of confusion. In thirteen weeks or less, he will make his grand entrance and we will feed him and rub his little back and sniff the top of his little baby head and fall in love.

Men of Gondor...

We were watching Return of the King yesterday. The extended version. I took a half-hour nap during the movie and still saw most of the important action. There is so much in those stories to chew on and contemplate and inspire, but this is what particularly struck me yesterday. Hopefully you'll forgive me if I get any of the details slightly wrong. I love Tolkien more than many people do (Really...Tolkien is Son2's middle name) , but my mind is not exactly a steel trap for all the place names and such. My husband's is. I don't understand how he remembers it all, but then again, his psychic space isn't quite as hijacked by schedules and appointments and medication dosages and social security numbers. So he can better remember the details of the Lord of the Rings and other stuff that I have no room for.

Anyway. In this scene of Return of the King, the battle for Minis Tirith has begun and the good guys are completely outnumbered, waiting for reinforcements. It looks like all the forces of hell are arrayed against our friends. Gandalf is standing with the men of Gondor, trying to steady their nerves because the steward of Gondor can't be bothered to do so. (He is busy planning his suicide and his son's death because he has lost all hope.) But the battle is on and something is battering the gates of the citadel, and clearly that something is about to break through. There is nothing the men of Gondor can do to stop it. So Gandalf says, "Men of Gondor, no matter what comes through that gate, stand your ground."

On the second day of the new year, that line rang true. There are good years and bad ones. I feel more hopeful at the beginning of this year than I have in the past few. Some things have shifted for me recently; I really didn't expect to enter this year with this little ballast of hopefulness. Yet I have, and I am grateful. But I know others who are now standing their ground, and my heart goes out to them.

I know these battles always come at us unforeseen. Things grow dark in our lives, and then darker still. Sometimes the very best you can do is stand your ground. You go on, somewhere well past hope, somewhere well past what feels like hanging on, but by grace you don't turn back or run away or do what Job's wife advised: curse God and die. Sometimes you can stand your ground so long that if it feels like you're not standing anymore and you wonder if you ever had any ground to begin with. But you did, and you do. Hope often arrives at the darkest moments, but not before you think you've already experienced the darkest moments. In the movie, a flower blooms on the barren white tree of Minis Tirith while the battle rages on. No one knows it's there, but that doesn't mean hope hasn't bloomed.