On the train.

Now that baby boy is demanding to be seen from my middle region, people have been asking me left and right how I'm feeling.  Physically, I have zero complaints.  Compared to what I've heard from other women about their pregnancies, I think I'm breezing right along.  But in the last couple of weeks the weight of becoming a mother has really started to sink in.

The only way I can describe the whirl of feelings and emotions is that it's like being on a train that you can't get off of. In life, we have so many choices.  We choose what we do, when we do it, who we do it with.  We make some pretty monumental decisions, too - like getting married and buying houses - but all of those, even if inconvenient, can be undone.  But having a baby, after a certain point, is permanent.  He's ours forever, our creation, our responsibility. My life doesn't feel like it belongs entirely to me anymore.  My husband and I often talk about doing our best not to make decisions out of fear but the truth is if something ever seems too scary or too big, we can just back out.  But not this. And it's not that I want to.  I think it's just the knowing that I can't.  No matter how scary childbirth seems, I have to do it.  No matter how big parenthood feels, it's coming.

A few years ago my mom gave me all our old family photo albums, some of them going back generations and some just to my childhood.  When I was looking through them again, I noticed this photo collage she'd made when I was about two with a poem she wrote.  It has a really melancholy tone and I think I'm starting to understand it more now as motherhood approaches.

It's not that I don't 

know how but

there just isn't time

to plant and prune

and grow flowers

just now.

It's not that I've never

sewn a garment

collected and mulled

and collaborated with

patterns to fashion in

fabric and color

and flash.  But there isn't time right

now.

There's time enough

now for work 

and dishes and

sleep.

And any the rest that's 

left is for just

blue eyes and

bouncing and babbling

boisterous and beautiful

a baby no more

just growing so

fast just growing

so now.