The upper part of the Spring Valley Trail at Rock Bridge State Park winds through a grove of old cedar trees teeming with tree frogs whose constant chirrup, along with the rush of wind over evergreen, almost drowns out the distant noise of the city’s frenetic energy. I wandered off-trail this afternoon, dodging dead undergrowth to a place where I could make a reflection/writing station out of a picnic blanket stretched across a soft carpet of fallen needles and moss, the breeze filling my nostrils with the sweet scent of cedar. It isn’t perfect. I like to get away from everyone when I come to nature. I don’t want to hear traffic; I don’t want anyone to come by walking their dogs. I come to nature to commune with quiet, to find a place where my soul and my mind can rest, away from the constant grating of manmade noise.
But such places are hard to find where I live, and I’m trying to learn to find spiritual quiet without demanding perfect stillness. If I had been a more daring young woman, I might have done what my cousin Melanie did, and set off as a nomad across national parks, hiking through pristine wilderness in hours stolen from working whatever job I could find.
But I was not a courageous young woman. Not that way, anyway. And God has His plans for each of us, which always turn out for the best, as long as we approach them with the right attitude—an attitude of openness, of willingness to look for the good in whatever is handed to us.
After choir practice last night, I spoke to a woman for whom getting out of bed in the morning can be so painful that it sometimes causes her to have words with God. But the words she uses make all the difference. “I say, ‘God, fix me. I mean, fix my mind—so I don’t get resentful.’” Now that is the proper way to frame a prayer. Listening to her humbled me. This pregnancy, I have not kept a willing spirit and a grateful heart. Grateful for my baby, yes. Oh my, yes. But a woman who has traveled the road of infertility has no right to be as whiny as I have been these last months.
Early on, when I gained no weight, had no discomfort, and no morning sickness, I worried about miscarrying. It couldn’t be this easy—not with our history. Mid-pregnancy, I fussed about how much weight I gained all at once. And then, right before Christmas, the SI joint stuff hit. The twentieth of December, I could barely walk. I remember that date because we were caroling with the choir.
And now? Two weeks from this moment, it’ll all be over…barring Murphy’s Law, of course. Here at the end of pregnancy, I’m tired all the time. Too tired to clean, to play with the kids, even to write properly (which always energizes me). And vaguely nauseous some part of every day—just enough to sap my energy. I don’t remember being this tired before. It’s probably a combination of being 34 instead of 30, having the stomach virus and now a cold, and my usual trouble sleeping. I am grateful that the SI stuff has really settled down this week…as witness, I’m sitting cross-legged on the ground typing this on my NEO.
But still, I feel guilty for the energy I’m not giving my kids. Alex always wants to play with me…he doesn’t get nearly enough of me. And I feel sure that if I worked more with Julianna, she’d be much farther along.
And oh, the mess in our house! Christian’s always been the one to want the house spic n span, but these days it’s driving me crazy, too. Probably because I see it every time I turn around, and working up the energy to address it takes all day. By which time, of course, it’s worse!
When I set out to write about the end of pregnancy, I meant to make it humorous: laugh about how desperate I am to be able to lie on my back, to run, to bend over, to give piggyback rides. To balance the negatives with some raptures about the baby. It has gone in a different direction than I intended!
Well, I can rhapsodize about Baby, at least. I’m pleased to say that my baby already has a pattern of waking and sleep. S/he wakes up like clockwork between 5 and 5:30 every morning and then wakes me up with tickles under the ribs, knees poking out my right side (always my right), and playing scales on my stomach. I mean my stomach. Not the skin over my abdomen, but the organ itself. Now that is a weird feeling!
The only thing I will miss about pregnancy is watching the baby hop across my abdomen, jerking it this way and that, stretching lazily so that my belly undulates and rolls like a banner in the breeze. (Sort of. That’s really not a good analogy, but there’s nothing else on earth like the movement of a baby.)
And suddenly, here on my blanket beneath the cedars, the wind settles into quiet, and the soft, weak March sun wraps its tendrils around my neck, and I am sitting amid a symphony of cedars playing in canon as the breeze skips from one quadrant to another, caressing my skin with the outermost reaches of its passing.
And unexpectedly, I find the peace I came here searching for.
Kathleen M. Basi 