the mystery of

Immediately following high school, I worked full-time for a few years. Part-time student, 9 to 5 other stuff. At my job, I had occasion to read. A lot. Books for school and such. There was plenty of down time that could be spent doing other things. That was cool, pretty much the only cool thing about that job.

I've never been a newspaper reader, but one day I picked up a copy of something resembling "news." Back when they had regular writers who assembled somewhat local stories, rather then rehashing packaged pieces from around the country. Just to make sure we all understand the same thing about the latest medical research or, in some cases, interpretations of political maneuvering. "Some" might be a bit optimistic.

This had none of that. The cover story was a total and complete tragedy: the murder of a very young, local women. Not a whodunit, because they knew already. But there was murkiness in the details of why and just what, exactly, went down. In the end, the sentences handed down were minimal, especially given the nature of the crime. It was all very, very bad.

I remembered the story being crafted as a metaphor for a sadness that had consumed parts of my city. A rise in violent crime. Senselessness and abandon. There were references to the neighborhood where the crime occurred as being "rough". There were allusions; this kind of thing might happen there, though the writer did not give blame to the environment. This should not have happened, never and not anywhere. The seeds had been sewn long ago.

I read the story at my desk. There were so many details, it took up several pages. I was attached to every word, to the interpretations and the facts and the assumptions about what those facts meant, or what they might have meant. It was not pleasant or exciting. I was afraid. This was my town, but none of these things sounded like they could happen here. I didn't know where they were talking about. No familiar landmarks. I only knew streets with names. This must have been far away from me. Far enough to make me feel safe. But it sounded like such a big deal. I wondered if everyone had known about it except for me. I finished the story, and I didn't ask anyone if they knew. But I thought about it a lot, until I didn't anymore.

Time passes, and that story and many of its details have stuck with me. There have been contexts that give clues. Where the victim worked is a place I've driven past. I've thought about her every time. Without intention, I bring up some of the details in my mind, fuzzy though they are. And then I put them away. It is just not good to think about those things for very long. It's amazing how memories flow in and out and mean something but not too much. All the things we think throughout any given day. If we stopped to dwell too long, we would stand still forever.

Something that has faded, though, is the metaphor I mentioned. A sense that this story meant something more about the land. This memory has not stayed as much. Neither has the sense that this was a big case. There have been many events since then. A lot of other tragedies. And each one is as large as life for the moment its in the eye. When it's gone, there's not a space left unfilled. Just blanks in the periphery, where there are certain people who remember everything that used to be there.

Today, I thought very clearly of this case again. I had mentioned it to my husband when one of those times of remembering struck me, and I asked if he had heard of it, which he hadn't. I decided to try and find the original article to share it with him. In part so it could be big for him, too. And, if I'm honest, to see if the details I remembered were real or just the product of a groping memory. Maybe it hadn't happened at all; like when you see a movie for the second time and you wonder if the ending has changed. I had a few key words which I mixed back in forth in the search. Finally, I found it. Nestled in the findings, but certainly the same story that had once been read on paper.

There were several things I had remembered with crystal clarity. Descriptions of the trial, some direct quotes. And some things I hadn't known at all that now seem interesting. But something that hadn't stuck with me looked up from the first paragraph. The first sentence, even.

It was the location of the murder. It was one block from my current home.

I read the story out loud as though it were for the first time. Every landmark was not just recognizable; they make up the backdrop of my every day. Where phone calls were made just before. The house. The house. Corners and blocks. Places to eat. Everything is here.

I finished reading. We both agreed it was so terribly sad, and things have changed so much since then. "This isn't the same place." We haven't heard about these things happening that close in many years. It's safe now.

For someone's family, it is the same place. On those peripheries are endless spaces that used to be one thing and now the absence means something. Driving by this noun and the past tense will make someone stop.

Standing still.

We will fill this house with love and memories. Like tonight, too, she walked like mad and shook her head "no" to me when I asked her to stop doing something. Where she pulled the blanket up and over her head, getting caught, laughing without end. She leaped over my legs to cross the room and get a toy, banging her head on the floor and bursting into tired and woozy tears. But not into so many that she couldn't make her way over to my arms and put her head close to my chest, her face red and crying aloud. Wrapping herself as far around me as she could. I hushed her. And I kissed her. I held her and sent her love through the safeness I provide. Until she calmed down, and smiled, and went to play away from me again.

hope takes happiness in two rounds

I'm a harsh critic of the end of things. And that's not to say I have discerning taste. But I find the way things end does not often do justice to their beginnings or middles. I have found this to be a common problem with books. I haven't read fiction in a long time for this reason, though my mind has ached for that distraction. It's an issue with movies, too. I think part of the reason I like old movies so much is that I can give them a let on reality. It's like being on another planet with fabulous dresses made of sequins and mink. Where women go on boats to get some rest and perspective. There are notes pinned to their garments so they remember which coat to wear at dinner. She meets Paul Henreid and together, they crash their car in the mountains. Later on, he lights two cigarettes and gives her one. They blow smoke into a blue embrace. I could go on, but you get the idea. Or maybe you know what I'm talking about.

So I've found that often times, the end of things leaves me wanting more. Things really get going in a story and suddenly, or so it seems, the adventure is over and everyone is...happy. Like that's how it happens. As if happiness were inevitable. As if we weren't all trying to catch a glimpse of it in the ether.

Sometimes, all you have is hope, a most dastardly four-letter word. It's not even the promise of something that will come for certain, if not a long time from now. Hope could last forever. You could die hoping. But who wants to read a book where Romeo and Juliet sit in their opposing castledoms, but a moat away, just hoping they will get the chance to be together. Really, it's better if they meet, bang, see the birds, and off it. It's so much more understandable when you think about it that way.

I have found that the ends of things that make sense to me are the ones that lie awake in a bed of wanting. Dreams are unfulfilled and sometimes, the bad guy gets away. There is sadness and pain for certain. There is contemplation. You are alone, and you're thinking about the choices you have made and how you got there. And wondering if all the choices were right. And my God, some of those choices you've made affect other people. In fact, you've brought some people you love along for this crazy ride called "your life." And what if you've been horribly, fatally wrong? What if you thought you knew but you didn't really? What if there are more choices to make. Better choices. What if you can change things, right now. What if there's something else out there that is meant to be magic for you, where you're not split into halves of compromise. What if there's a world where you fit, se,ttled into the chair meant for you where you can do what you want to do and where there are no questions about the matter. And everyone you love is happy. What if that?

This is where the stories I don't like often end. In a place where the world ahead is a model of the moment where happiness was found. Every day from then on out must be the same. No growth. No character development. No reflection. It's a pudding of a life, really. Like taking your favorite picture and photocopying it again, and again, and again. The colors start to fade; it's never as good as the real thing.

I want an ending that distinguishes hope from happiness. Because hope isn't always easy. It's grasping and furious. I've seen it, and I know that's true. It's confrontational. You can't lie to it. And sometimes, you can't have enough. Some things have to end, and you redefine. To be strong enough for the next race. To keep fighting for the chance to get it right, and not blaming the absence of youth for your apathy. No one is ever too old for this.

I rip myself inside and out to change sometimes, almost for the sport of it. That's not good either. Sometimes the waters can be calm. We can learn some details about our protagonist. Habits and vices. It's important to understand what will come to pass. How can you imagine an ending without the shadow of a past?

But it's the imagining that is important, at least to me. Getting there, to wonder what has happened, and what's behind that door as it opens. The cool bell ringing on the frame signals the entrance of someone. Peek behind the shelf to see, and stay as long as the moment lets you. The end lays beyond the pages or the frame. Listen. Look with me.

the sequence with a smash cut

This was one of those weeks. When you do it to yourself, and the week finishes you off.

I overextended myself these last seven days. Some very important things at work, mix in a few personal endeavors, and then there's the general unexpectedness of life. A dash, let's say. As it goes, some things went well and some things, I think I'd rather forget. If I had it to do again, I would have made some different choices about my commitments. In a quiet moment, I'm even a little worried that I actually like to do this to myself. To make it almost impossible for me to have just one important thing going on at a time. Like how my daughter was born when Obama became president. I mean, come on.

This was a week when I played the impostor at the things I wish I could do. Let's face it: I'm not a scholar. I believe in the discipline, I believe in the rigor. I love to read about it. But, when it gets right down to it, it's just not me. This is a difficult thing to admit, because I've had a lot of dreams about the person I could be. An actress, director, lawyer, professor. I didn't put everything I had into any one of these pursuits, but they were roles I had imagined myself playing. The ones that made the cut after I read Nancy Drew and realized I wasn't going to be a detective. Or a cardiologist. These were identities I felt might be within my reach, and the only thing keeping me from taking their shape was time, and effort. That's what I always thought, anyway.

This week, I realized that one of these things was never really available to me. I just don't have the constitution, the muster, the belief. Or the skills. The aptitude. I'm really one of those people that everyone just thinks is worldly. And I can sell almost everything, because I'll believe in anything. With honesty. So this comes off as smart, committed, and knowledgeable. It's gotten me far. I'm not a fake, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm not meant to be an expert, a specialist. I'm a pinwheel. I'm gullible.

So this week, I shut the door to a future I thought I might have had. Without sadness or regret. I just said good-bye, and took a step away and into something else that is uncertain. It could be exciting, even. There are other dreams to be had, I'm sure. I just wish I hadn't packed this discovery all into this week.

This morning, sitting on the floor with my daughter while she was playing, my legs crossed, she handed me a book to read. I know it by heart, but we went through the pages one by one and read as though each one was new. She sunk her head into my lap and held my knee. She looked up at me and smiled and made a lion's roar. And I thought to myself, she has no idea the dreams I've let go.

So I'll still believe in anything.

Fridays with my father

There came some point in my life when I realized I had two parents.

I have always been close to my mother. Very, very close. She's a part of me that is undeniable. We look alike, we talk alike...sometimes I wish I had a gun. A little gun. Extra points to those who understand that reference.

This is a brief entry, because it's an introduction; a teaser.

There came a moment where I realized I had a father. A wonderful being who is as much a part of me as anything in this world. There is no therapy that could help me understand myself as much as the time I spend with my dad. An amazing person. A flawed wild thing. From outside Minnesota. A half of me that I almost didn't believe I had.

I have so many things to say about this. But for now, for this moment, I only want to tell you that my father and I share a serious kinetic vibe. Something that passes over and beyond any distance we've created, or that has been born despite our intentions. Our Friday mornings bear stories. And there are so many to tell. He is wonderful and beautiful and I love him with all my heart. He is how I understand the world. And this next entry. The one I have yet to write. It's in that time that I will begin to explain what that love is all about. The day I realized I was like someone else other than the women I have known. And that thing, that person...was so, amazingly cool.

alone in a room of 1,000

Before my daughter was born, we suffered the loss of a child. That event kicked off a truly horrible week of crap. The kind of week that, when someone tells you about it, makes you wonder whether or not "those sorts of things" always happen to "that person."

* * *

On Christmas Eve 2007, we discovered we were expecting our first child. That same day, my husband accidentally severely cut himself cooking dinner. We laughed at the carelessness of the mistake, and noted that it would make it on our list of bad things that had happened. I remember he turned grey. We had an ER trip on Christmas Eve. Whatever.

We heard the heartbeat at 10 weeks; the doctor found it right away with a tiny microphone pressed against my belly. It sounded strong, like a racehorse.We made small plans and talked about the good times to come. Boy or a girl? Redhead? I really had no idea.

At 14 weeks, I went in for my monthly doctor’s visit, the first one I had been to by myself. My husband was home, horribly sick with the flu. He was in-between bouts of fever and shivering, and sort of felt like he was going crazy or dying. So he stayed home. I read a People magazine while I waited for the doctor. Nicole Kidman was finally going to have a child after years of trying and some previous tragedies. Good for her.

The doctor came in, we talked. I asked questions about food I could eat, and she said as long as I didn't eat only Cheetos and smoke crack, I would be fine. A little blue cheese was nothing to worry about. I felt like I was gaining weight in not cute ways. She checked for the heartbeat but couldn’t find it. “Don’t freak out,” she said, smiling. “I’m not,” I said. “We’ll do an ultrasound,” she said. “Sounds good,” I said. I'm not actually prone to freaking out. Especially when things don't look good. It's a strange calm that I'm grateful for.

In the ultrasound room, the technician put the warm wand on my stomach. The picture of the baby appeared. It looked just like I thought it would, but I knew it was over before she even told me. I saw a band of solid lines where I would have expected to see the blips of life. And it just didn't move.

“I’m so sorry; we didn’t expect to see this today.”

I had just told everyone because I thought it was safe. The baby was gone but had not gone away. I felt hot. I cursed out loud and asked if I could call my husband. I knew I would have to do what hadn't been taken care of for me. And because my partner in crime was totally bedridden, I would have to do it alone. The doctor came in. I asked if I could have a drink that night. She said I could have two. And that I could smoke crack. That last part was a joke, I'm pretty sure.

I got home and poured myself a big vodka and something and went into the bedroom where my love lay all bundled up to prevent the chills, still sweating. It was all so sad. I didn't care at that point if I got sick. I almost wished I would. He was missing his class that night, a course that was co-taught by a professor out-of-state and another professor who I knew quite well. He had written one of my recommendations for graduate school, served as my honor's thesis adviser, and had been very supportive of my scholarly pursuits. He was a good guy and the closest thing I had to a mentor. And he was funny. So because he couldn't go to class, my husband had called in and was listening via phone, not really participating. I sat there with him, hearing students talk and the professor I know guide the conversation with insight and humor. I didn't finish my drink. I made a few phone calls and talked to some friends. There was even some much needed laughter, which I was so happy for. But I spent the night on the couch not sleeping, my mind racing.

* * *

At the hospital the next morning, a sweet woman in the elevator told me how much she liked my shoes. “Thanks,” I creaked and entered into idle conversation. The intake nurse, eying my feet said, “Those shoes are too cool.” Apparently, as you're being squeezed through a black hole, you are forced to be normal. My shoes were hand-painted with a picture of Botticelli's "Primavera" on the top of each. They are pretty cool.

The intake nurse left after asking me some questions, making sure I knew the name of the procedure I was going to have. I accidentally switched around the letters and called it a "CD." I sat there, sobbing. Really at the total sadness of the loss, for the thought of what would never be. That something had ended and that somehow, my body had been a part of it. I had lost something I had never known, which was even sadder. We had never had a chance to fall in love with each other. I said "good-bye" aloud and waited for someone to come get me. And I stopped crying.

In the room where they do the procedure, one of the nurses noticed the tattoo on my right calf. “It’s Whinnie the Pooh! I love Whinnie the Pooh!” I felt sick. She was so sweet. And so normal. I imagined her going home and having dinner with her family. I wondered if she ate breakfast, mostly because I hadn't. Could she eat food before she helped people go through things like this? I wondered if she had always been that sweet or if she had grown to be as she learned to care for strangers.

I had decided I wanted to be awake for everything and as things commenced, I literally began to see stars. My head and chest started to implode. “I feel hot,” I said, and soon a cool washcloth was on my forehead. My heart was pounding in my throat and I suddenly had a very terrible headache. I was made of fire, and the stars exploded into tiny planets. I breathed deeply and steadily. I am convinced that one can conquer anything with breath. I started to cool down, though the headache remained. And it was over. The nurse handed me my clothes.

“What cool shoes!” she said. Seriously, I'm not making this up.

I went home and sat on the corner of the couch. My husband was still home sick. We sat at opposite ends in our own zones of sickness and sadness.

* * *

I stayed home the next day, too. A Wednesday. I just wanted one more day to compose myself before facing people telling me how sorry they were. I knew I would be annoyed by these comments, and I hated myself in advance for that. That day, I received a phone call from my mom. She told me the professor who had been my mentor, the same professor who had been teaching my husband's class and whose voice I had heard on my worst day, had passed away the night before. Very, very suddenly. The memorial would be on Friday. We decided we would go together, my mother and I. I hung up the phone and began to cry again. It all felt so tremendous.

***

On Friday, we went to the temple. It was a really cold day, especially for March. I recognized people there, none of whom knew what had happened to me on Monday. We sat there with another former teacher of mine and listened to people tell stories. They were things I hadn't known about him: how he took care of immigrants from Russia. How much he loved trains. How he and his wife loved to dance. And there were some things I knew already: how he loved to teach. What a mess he was. How he made big things happen out of nothing. There was a lot of love there. Both of his children, older than me and with families of their own, shared memories of their dad. It felt strange to listen to it. I felt as though I were invisible, eavesdropping in on a part of someone's life that was supposed to be private. Sitting there with my own private story. Their loss was so big, because his death had sealed up the possibility of future memories. And they already had some idea of how wonderful that future might have been.

***

The week after all of this, I had to travel out of town for a conference. Of course I did. The keynote speaker was a very vibrant, well-known conductor, and his shtick was to tell us how music tells stories that transcend language. He played a piece by Chopin that, he said, was about loss. And he asked the room of over 1,000 people to take a moment and be silent, and to remember someone close who had been lost. Everyone obliged, and the room fell into a hush.

I felt like I was made of sand, falling into the shape of something else. I had so much I was missing but still felt as though none of belonged to me. What memories was I entitled to, the ones that hadn't been or the ones that weren't mine to have? I danced along a precipice. And finally, I chose something to remember.

memories are different than stuff

I've always been somewhat obsessed with memories. I used to keep a memory box with pieces of books I started in the sixth grade, newspaper clippings, and just odds and ends. Kind of like Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird" but I had no Boo on the other side. And I was probably never that precocious or brave.

I know a woman who, in the past few years, suffered a very difficult loss. Her longtime partner passed away after a painful battle with cancer. They had built a life and routines around each other as comes with any commitment. And then, he was gone. Not unexpectedly, but painfully. And, I think, an uncertain world unfolded before her. At least that's what I imagine.

Not long after this happened, we were meeting in her space. I noticed that on her wall was a mirage of postcards, all of them very particular and lovely. I asked her about them, and she said she had picked them up with her boyfriend throughout their travels together. And that she looked at them to remember all of the wonderful places there were in the world to explore, and how many things she had seen. It was her pick-me-up. At the time, it seemed like such an obvious thing to do to "spruce up" an office. I thought--and think I even said--that I would make sure to buy a postcard during all my travels yet to come, and I would create a wall of my own that I could admire when I needed to. Making memories when I really needed them, in place of sunshine, beers outside at noon, and trains taken through landscapes that looked like Wisconsin, but were much further away.

We have traveled to Europe, Thailand, and New York since then. And at each place, as I promised I would, I bought a postcard, and have begun to create my own wall of memories. Yet, somehow, it has never done anything for me. It doesn't take me away. They're just nice pictures that I got somewhere else, and now they're here. Taking up a spot on my wall, but not opening a door to anything interesting.

The stories I have from those adventures are ones I share every day with my own partner in crime. And we talk a lot about the memories we have yet to make, the wines we have yet to taste, and scooters we have yet to crash. We're forever admiring the consistency of our life together, and making plans for life tomorrow. We take for granted the time we have, reminding ourselves that life is precious but never treating it as precious as we might if we thought it were fleeting.

This woman I know. I think maybe those postcards mean something more to her than mine do to me. Maybe a memory of something much greater than a place or a site. That makes her wall of postcards more beautiful than I could possibly imagine or hope to recreate. Nothing I own means that much to me. Nothing can compare to the gift of having time to make plans. And break them. I could live in an empty room forever, un-spruced. And instead, we'll open the door to the outside for as long as we are able.

the doozer

This morning, I left the house at far too early an hour to head to my office under the auspices of making the final edits to my master's thesis. The tale of this work has its own series of twists and turns, and will certainly be the subject of another (or several) posts. But now is not the time for that. Now is the time for the doozer.

* * *

I have taken to drinking fully-caffeinated, full-fat coffees when I let myself indulge. And this morning, I knew I would need this comfort as a nestled down in my office to expand on the "Uncontrolled Epidemic," the dominate discourse emerging from press coverage of sex crime and sex offenders during the 1940s. That's my thesis. Bam.

Off to unnamed coffee shop. Fattest latte you have. Thank you. No, I don't want a scone. And yes, I'm having a fine day. Two women walk into the coffee shop, venturing the wrong way into the line. There's a very specific way in which one is supposed to get in line at this place, and these women started to crash it. Up went my heckles, ready to let them know what for. I hate bottlenecks. But they corrected themselves. Civilized, I thought.

I'm now at the little waity place at the end of the counter when one of the potentially line-budging women walks slowly and somewhat uncertainly to take her place behind me, so as not to disrupt the order of the coffee-waiting universe. And I recognize her. It's my fourth grade teacher: the doozer.

My folks sent my sister and I to Catholic school for two years. Never mind the fact that we are not, nor have we ever been, Catholic. But mom likes nuns. I went for third and fourth grade where I had the doozer. The doozer was also central to the music program at the school, so I can't think of a xylophone without thinking of her.

I should probably explain what a doozer is.

During my time in the fourth grade or then abouts, we watched a lot of Fraggle Rock at home. The fraggles: sweet, peaceful hippie muppets that lived in a symbiotic relationship with the doozers. The doozers: tiny construction-worker muppets who just liked to build for the sake of it. And the fraggles liked to eat what the doozers built, and the doozers were ok with this because they just wanted to keep building. So the fraggles would eat, and the doozers would build. And my parents, in the most affectionate of all intentions, called my teacher "the doozer" because of her resemblance to these mini things constructed of green felt.

So there was the doozer. With her partner. I remembered hearing that not long after I left the school, the doozer left, too. And I remember there being talk about her being gay, and about this having an impact on her decision to leave. Or on her leaving, anyway. I remember hearing that she cried when she talked to her classes about leaving. And, at the time, I remember not thinking or feeling much at all.

But there at the coffee shop, in about 30 seconds, I was overwhelmed by the sight of her. From my judgment of her as a line crasher to the rumored judgment of her at our school. From where I would be minutes later, working on my thesis, to where I was over 20 years earlier, in her class, singing about how the Lord would find me no matter where I went. Singing songs about the facets of a God I didn't understand and don't believe in. Not that way. She looked exactly the same.

I stopped her and asked her if she was a teacher. She said she used to be. I said she had been my fourth grade teacher, and gave her my name. She said she remembered me because of my hair. Her partner laughed with amazement, and said they hadn't been stopped in so long: "It used to happen all the time, but it hasn't happened in years." We chatted for a couple minutes about what we were up to (both still in education). I told her I was off to make some final edits to my master's thesis, feeling sheepish and nearly fraudulent, as though I should explain that I had been working on the same damn paper for nearly a decade.

Our coffees came and so did our time to part, as happens when the natural order of life interrupts perfectly good conversations. And she said, "Well...maybe I'll see you someday. You never know." And I felt an overwhelming surge of emotion. Truly, a desire to tell her how we had affectionately named her being after a sweet little muppet. But instead I said, "My parents really like you. We've talked about you over the years." And she smiled and said that was nice. And we said good-bye.

What's the meaning here. There is the one obvious thing: thank your teachers. Bless them. Praise them. They're not all good, to be sure. But the ones that are good are so because they care deeply and tremendously about helping people grow up to be ok in the world. So there's some meaning. And, of course, don't assume the worst. I feel pangs of horribleness when I think about how prepared I was to be nasty to the doozer for line-jumping. People are just people. Most of the time, anyway.

But there's another meaning here for me, I think. It's the sense that those people or moments that happen in life, around which you create memories, will arise again throughout your journey. The doozer has been part of the language of my crawl to adulthood, so it seems so logical that I would meet her again someday. Maybe even destined that it would be on the day that I was on my way to scribble out the last few words of something that has been so hard for me to finish. As though telling her it was going to happen meant that it had to, that I have to finish or I'll be lying. It makes me think of other bits of my life and how they will greet me in the days to come. I hope when they do, it's much like this. Something just perfect for the moment, to give me resounding perspective, however fleeting. I might even call it a glimpse of grace.

something to begin with

Today, I inched ever closer to finishing my thesis. Something I've been working on for quite awhile. During the duration of this work, many things have happened. I got married, bought a house, got my first real job, and gave birth to my daughter. Other things happened, too. Those nuances of life that are perhaps more interesting, and which are best saved for other entries. But since this is the start of something, I want to tell a story of my daughter's birth. Not the story, but a story of the day. A moment that culminated in what is the most beautiful, wonderful thing. And look, I went and spoiled the ending.

* * *
January 27, 2009. Her godfather's birthday. I hadn't slept well. Five days overdue and very much over going to work and hearing the "you're still here's" that are so easy to give and mean nothing. So, I stayed home. I had been having those wonderful contractions; you know something is happening, but the "what," exactly, is unclear.

I spent the day on my computer, legs crossed on the couch. Chatting and working and counting in-between pulses. It seemed to be every hour, and yet I was so sure that the time was far away. At noon, I put down my laptop and put on my headphones. Walking helps bring it all about, I had been told. So I decided to walk around my very small living room. Stella, my dog, was a little concerned. My pacing made her pace, so she went to sleep in the dining room. Poor thing.

First, "Tangled Up in Blue" by Bob Dylan. An amazing acoustic version that was first introduced to me on my 21st birthday on a mix from my best friend. It was nestled in there between Phish and Ben Harper, two artists who I don't really know much about, even to this day. But this version, Bob just strumming. A slower version of the one best known. I held my belly, so amazingly big. And we walked, the two of us. And I encouraged her to make her way.

Then "Such Great Heights," the Iron and Wine version. We swayed together; "Come down now." I cried openly and walked and danced with her. I hadn't talked to her that much until then. But in that moment, as that silent, sweet little song floated about us both, I felt as if I'd known her always and told her everything. All of my history and fears. The particular parts of myself that I keep on the inside. And in that now, I could ask her to make her way to me. We walked back and forth, not pacing but moving together in a loving cradle. We made a lullaby together, one that rocked us into union. It was so touching and private. Even now, writing this, it's hard to let the memory live someplace other than my heart. It's hard to not explain it enough.

Several hours later, she was born. Or came into the space where her father could see her, and other people who love her now could marvel at her grace. But we had already become mother and child, dancing in the living room inside each other. We had both been born together. And while every time I've had with her since then has been an unparalleled explosion of beauty, laughter, and insane sweetness, I do believe I have had no gift greater than those 4 minutes and 11 seconds on January 27.

Every time I hear that song, I think about leaving a me behind and entering the age of us.