Bodie

You were born in a heat wave.

Burnt red and brown orange leaves crisped and fell to the warm sidewalks.
In downtown Campbell where we shuffled towards food, Friday night dates wrapped themselves around each other (not in sweaters like on other October evenings).
A summery breeze blew through the valley shaking persimmons from dry branches.

You were born to a waxing moon; another being forming and growing and bellying out into the world, just about reaching full term.

Before you were born, we ate Blue Line pizza and salad and garlic bread and waited for your descent. We gathered on the bed next to you (in there) and watched nature videos and laughed and sewed and told you it was time.
But you had your own clock to follow.
We rushed to the hospital. The nurse on call said to settle in for a long night. I said, I think it will be a quick delivery. I forgot to knock on wood or throw salt over my shoulder or spin around three times. We came home when you stretched out arms and legs in protest but the body around you was still quivering.

We waited and slept and ate almond chicken and red rice, summer vegetables and Caesar salad. We toasted you with wine (and water for you), we asked you to show your tiny face.

A fury of sharpness, of muscle and electric impulses: a commitment (on your part) to the process. Your calisthenics for arrival increased in intensity. Will this be it?

We crossed lanes and towns to the hospital once more, hoping this was for real, hoping it would be quick. I forgot to offer Neptune the wine or sage the room or pray to the quick labor god.

You would not be rushed.

36 to 43 to 52. Hours. Later.

You decided to maybe contemplate kind of perhaps coming out.

I stood in the shower with your mama kneeled on the floor. She was breathing rough, tears mixing with the warm water I sprayed onto her body, your daddy pressing his hands onto her hips and soothing her with soft words.
Every ounce of my being screamed, You are wasting water in a drought! I fought the impulse to shut the faucet off and watched the water hit her taut back, stream down her swollen belly where you squirmed, watched that liquid relief swirl down the drain.
She needed a reprieve. I needed some perspective.

A thin tube snaked next to her spine offered respite from the agony. I knew it would be painful, this process of birthing, this sacred act of one body becoming two and then one again, but I didn’t realize what it would be to witness such pain. It was not your fault, this is how it worked, but she was exhausted and anxious about your arrival; she did not know at that time how beautiful you would be, how muscular and alert and stormy-ocean eyed.

Her legs tingled, she relaxed into fits of sleep.

Her veins filled with oxytocin- a little fluid text message of love and welcome.

Hour 56, you felt it was time. You took the dive.

Pushing and breathing and pushing some more and out you came purple (your mama’s favorite color in childhood) and dark haired and bloody and totally perfect. Onto her chest you went as you cried and sniffled and squirmed. She took you into her arms as if you had always been in her arms, calling you lovey, cooing and smiling and unable to take her eyes off you.
You blinked and settled in to this new life. Outside.

You were born in an October heat wave.

You were born under a gibbous moon.

You were born into breath and tears and love.
 

You have changed this world already with your voice.

I look forward to you telling me (babbling, screeching, mumbling, forming words and dreams) more of your long, twisting, beautiful story in the many years to come.