Day 3 – Moment
December 3 – Moment.
Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).
(Author: Ali Edwards)
On May 15th, I asked someone to get me a glass of water. No lemon. I hate rind! The assistant (Marion) to my midwife (Lynn) went down to our kitchen to grab it – I couldn’t let go of my doula’s hand. I had been pushing for an hour and couldn’t wait for it to be over. When Marion got downstairs in our little loft, she indicated to my best friend that the baby’s head was capping by about an inch.
Moments later, Lynn called downstairs, “MARION! I need you!!”
It’s hard for me to wrap my words around the following moments. I was hyper-present, in a way that I have never understood presence. I could not have uttered a descriptive word. I was so IN the moment, so IN my body. Honestly, I don’t know how to explain having a baby. I don’t know how to tell you about being on a stool next to my bed in a tiny loft, feeling like I was dying, all the while feeling like I was being born. It’s just this wild thing that happened! It was so surreal that it stands to remind me, in a way, of why simple things in life often seem mundane. They rather have to be, don’t they? Because if everything could be as intense as having a baby in your tiny loft? Well. That’d just be too much being alive for anybody’s brain to handle.
Lynn asked me to reach down and grab my baby. I remember how confused he looked! And how alive, really. His spirit just filled up the room as he took his first gurgling breaths. And then! he started to scream. He was pissed! My husband and I laughed.
I yelled downstairs, “Katie! Get up here! You’ve gotta see this guy!”
