| Sunny Side Up May 10, 2006 �2006, Kathleen Gibson Mother in Waiting, God in waiting "I'm not moving till this baby comes out." Almost nine months pregnant for the first time and resembling a puffer fish in full attack, I perched myself in the white rocker in the yellow nursery and stuck like a barnacle. Outside, the flowering plum wore spring garb. In full bloom myself, I felt not half as appealing as the blossoms that drifted like spring snow over the tulip bed. Just weary, sore, and clumsy. Sore and clumsy, I'd expected. I'd camped on pre-natal territory - they were part of the landscape. Aching arms, on the other hand, I'd been unprepared for. Other mothers had warned me about my belly button popping inside out, about puffy ankles and Braxton Hicks contractions; about irritability and sudden squalls, but no one had mentioned the problems with the arms. No one. They ached from dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn, and back again. Ached when they made breakfast, when they painted walls, when they followed my hands as they stroked the small quilt I'd sewed, with its cheerfully embroidered animals and rainbow border. Ached when they encircled the contours of my now all too familiar baby bubble. Ached when I tried to tie my shoes and wondered if the bubble would burst. They were not made of flesh and bone anymore, those limbs at the end of my shoulders, only of an interminably long and tender hurt, as real as bruised tendons and ligaments. Only one thing could stop their pain. I knew it, they knew it, my husband knew it, the universe knew it. They ached for loneliness. They ached to hold the busy being bouncing within me. So much a part of me, but so separate from me. Inextricably tied to my life, but not at all my life. They wanted that, like dry earth aches for what the swollen clouds promise but don't deliver. That much they wanted it. "Out, baby." I demanded. "I want to see you, to find out who's been causing us all this fuss. Hurry, please. I'm sick of waiting." My husband chuckled, but he'd never been nine months pregnant, swollen like a sponge left in the rain and irritable to boot. What did he know about waiting? I stuck my tongue out at him and kept rocking. I rocked away mornings. I rocked away afternoons and evenings and held that baby under my belly with those aching arms. One night I rocked until the plum tree spun itself into lace on the loom of the purple sky and finally dissolved into the soft grey of the city night. I rocked until that baby's father came and led me from chair to bed. The baby began to come, I seem to remember, during that night; borne on the advance tide of amniotic fluid that swept me, giggling, into the hospital. When I held him, my arms ceased hurting. Father in Heaven - longing for us with a mother-heart and everlasting, aching arms - forgive our infernal dawdling. Respond Home |
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