Dear Wolf, my son.
You make me want to sing. You make me want to write poetry, to dance. It’s as if when you passed through my birth canal you broke open great crashing waves of creativity that I thought were fancies of my youth, left long ago to die. On your sixth day of life my parents went home. I was moved to tears all day by the feeling of their absence in our home and simultaneously filled with surges of joy as your father and I worked through our first day alone with you, as parents.
That evening we ate dinner and listened to music. Dad was in the kitchen while I held you on the couch–still too sore to sit at the table. Both of us sang to the music, songs we’ve loved throughout our lives. Dad while cooking, and I looking down at you in my arms. As I opened my mouth to sing a new voice exited my lips. The voice of a mother, louder, stronger, more powerful and also more vulnerable. The cries of your labor loosened my jaw, dropped my soft palate, allowed a new openness. As I raised my voice to join your dad’s tears flowed from me, hot and fast, drenching my shirt like the breast milk that pours from me now, every time I hear you cry.
These tears, this experience of bringing you into the world, has let open my heart to the fullness and also the emptiness of love. The fullness while I connect with every parent on the planet who has known the joy of ushering new life into being. And the emptiness which is the love that underlies all in every moment, even when we cannot seem to see. The love that moves people through their lives.
“It’s so big. It’s just so big.” I said to your dad when he joined me for dinner from the kitchen.
“I know.” he replied. and we sat across from each other, with you between us, and sang while we cried.
This was written on November 17th, 8 days after Wolf was born. It’s a part of a collaborative journal that my husband Jeff and I are keeping for Wolf. Thanks for reading. I’ll keep working on posts.
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