It is currently Monday, May 13th, 12:32pm Eastern Standard Time.
My son is due on Friday, May 24th.
There he is up there, making me look like a bad beach-ball thief...and it occurs to me, as it has periodically over these 9 months, but perhaps more forcefully now that we are SO CLOSE:
nothing will ever be the same again.
I remember counting down to college. I was so excited to move to the big city, and learn only things that I really wanted to learn. I was terrified too, but it was all mixed in with the excitement. For teenaged me, college felt like the first thing I would truly do *on my own.* A passageway to Adult Me.
My wedding (a mere 22 months ago) prompted a countdown as well. I was so excited to gather family & friends and start a new phase. I wasn't as terrified, since I already felt married to this man (it happened sneakily, over our time together), but there was certainly still an element of "the unknown," and much reverence for what it meant: it meant that not only the two of us, but the OUTSIDE WORLD would view us as partnered. It meant that we would be responsible for each other, in our hearts and *also* our actions, *also* every decision made hereafter.
Is it o.k. that this (behold the baby bump) feels even bigger? Er, so to speak?
My hubby is my very favorite person. I tell my son that he will be my other favorite person:). I have granted myself two. But starting favorite #2 from SCRATCH??! Being with him for every bit of his childhood and young adulthood? Watching him pass through *countless* phases as he forms as a person?? I can barely hold this concept in my brain. I feel like nothing so radical has happened to me since my OWN birth.
And from hereon out, I will be a mother.
Reading a book, taking a walk, going to an audition, acting on stage, hanging out with friends -- everything, everything I do, whether he is physically there or not, will involve HIM. My son. As my husband is part of everything, this person will be, but in an even deeper way, it seems, because he CAME from me. It is romantic to think of your lover existing only for you, ultimately, but here will be a human that exists only BECAUSE OF me & my husband. He would have no existence without us.
Again: can't really fully fit this into my brain. Maybe this is the kind of information that lives in you in some other form. Once our son is here, and we hold him and touch him and see him and start to get to know him...maybe then all of these insane truths will settle into my blood, my bones, my breaths. And I will know what it is to be a "parent." And I will be something new...something different than I was. Re-born.
A single birth is the making of THREE new people, not just one. My partner and I, we are moving to a whole new world.
