photo by Terry Cotterall Lagana
After what felt like the longest pregnancy ever (though it was actually three weeks shorter than usual), we welcomed Tula Frederick Rae to our crazy little corner of the world on a late September morning, attended not only by her adoring mama and papa but the warmest, most capable cadre of doctors and nurses for whom one could ever hope. (I know the names of everyone in this photo, and of those who were outside the frame, too. In a cesarean birth -- which is a bit of of lights! camera! action! -- that counts for a lot).
And then we were six.
The photo restrospective of our month in Maine was just one of a great many things in 2011 that got started but not finished. Because when you're pregnant with your fourth and the other three are under the age of 6, the word surrender figures even bigger than the belly.
Way back when, I started writing here with simple documentation in mind; the big, the small, the good, the weird. But I've been distracted lately, and not just for being pregnant.
Even before the birth of our littlest, I was feeling this thing.
A certain impatience.
For the birth, yes, but also to finally begin a long-awaited return to myself. The self who is more than just a tired lump of human who rises exhausted each morning and hits the pillow the same way each evening. More than a wife or a mother or a daughter or a friend. The self who once was the sort to lace up her running shoes and just go, with the wind in her hair and nothing hurting. Or, despite the hurting.
I've made it my mission to find her again, and so, for the foreseeable future, I'll be taking a sabbatical from this space.
Happy New Year. Here's to making it count.