Waiting for Baby

Mostly what is left is the waiting.

I can walk now, and I enjoy it greatly. I fly up and down stairs, carefully but full of joy. I rest and do not carry things. Other than time and ice and kindness, nothing helped my hip to heal more than the midwife/naturopath's recommendation of great quantities of turmeric, a known anti inflammatory.

So I can do things again. I can move around the kitchen and cook. I can remember that following the recipe gives better results, sometimes, than complete improvisation. The freezer is filling up.

Pictures now hang on some walls. We have diapers stowed in large stacks in the antique dresser that will be the baby's changing table. The birthing pool is partway inflated, in readiness. The gaudy cartoon-fishies on the side really clash with our decor.

I fill the waiting with naps, with zazen, and with socializing. Soon it will be harder to connect with people. So many good folks are no longer in orbit; from a few, the silence is deafening. But it does not matter. The world is opening, the trees are in bud, flowers rise up, and we are never really separated from the people we care about.

Still, it is good to talk to my cousin M, to share chilaquiles with R and J, to know that A is coming over later to tell me about her kids and her job.

I am "due" in a week, but I secretly believe the baby will come before that.