looking back and looking forward

A couple of years ago, I started writing a blog on MySpace. I don't even remember how I got started doing it, but it evolved into a story about becoming a mother. I was pretty faithful about writing that blog throughout Dora's first year of life, and even later. I've been thinking for a while about creating some sort of archive here with all of those blog entries. I went back to reread some of them recently, to see if they are worth resurrecting. I think that they are - at least some of them. It's funny to see that, two and a half years later, I'm still, in a way, thinking about the same things, asking the same questions. Have I made any progress at all?


The night I re-read my old blog entries, I also read an article by Anne Lamott, one of my absolute favorite authors. In the article, she talks about finding who we're supposed to be, something that everyone, including my hero Anne Lamott, apparently, struggles with. Having read Lamott's work, I know that she has, indeed, made many mistakes and wrong turns in her life. But, she's always been a writer, right? Did she go through years of imagining herself as a writer while doing something else, or shopping her books around unsuccessfully, all the while considering a career in retail sales? Of course she did - even Julia Child wasn't always Julia Child, right? - but it's hard to imagine those we most admire ever having questioned their place on earth, ever having been unsure or unable to take the next step.

Admitting my own questions and frustrations is not to say that I don't love my life right now. If we can't do anything but imagine how much better our lives would be some other way, we're wasting our time. Today, I came home from work early because Dora's daycare was closed. We spent the remainder of the afternoon - most of it, anyway - building a city of blocks around the train set with butternut squash, garlic, and sage roasting in the oven. We were giggling, snuggling, smiling, making funny jokes about how each of our pets lived in one of the wood block buildings we had constructed. That's Martin's house, and that's where Simone lives, and Mommy, Daddy, and Dora live in the big tall one. It was a sweet, sweet afternoon - a pleasure, a gem, a little winter gift. It was my sweet little angel and me, cozy in our warm little house with the wet snow all around outside, reminding ourselves of why we've got it so good.

It's funny to think that, two and a half years ago, we were blindly stepping off into the unknown of parenthood. Our whole world was about wondering if we had a boy or a girl, worrying about the birth, wondering how hard it would be. Now we know - it's incredibly hard, incredibly life-changing. Now we know that birth is beautiful, that we were blessed by a little girl angel baby. Now we know that, even though we can dream about what we hope to become in the future, we have a gift in who we are today, too.

So here's to looking back, and looking forward.

Friday, July 27, 2007

just waiting It's July 27th - a date I have been saying for 9 months. It's an estimate, and I was pretty sure the big arrival wouldn't be today anyway, but it's still a little surreal to look at the calendar and see that today is that day. I'm just going about my usual business, even though everyone keeps saying, "You're still here?". Someone said to me today, "enjoy your last few days of being pregnant." It's so strange to think that any day now, we will be 3 instead of 2. One morning you wake up and suddenly there is another person in your life, who'll be there forever. I don't even know if this person is a boy or a girl, what their name will be, what they'll look like, but it's still pretty amazing. And the other amazing thing is that somehow, and we don't know exactly how yet, we'll get there together. There's no way to get there - to the arrival of this new life - except to go through it, knowing (hoping) that something - our love, our faith, God - will help us find our way.