dear mother nature,

are you waking me up earlier every day so that i am ready for motherhood?
i appreciate the training but i would rather get more sleep
sincerely,
mom-to-be at 3:15 am

there are places i remember

i went to rutgers this past weekend
one of my favorite teachers is retiring and it was the last faculty cocert she would be presenting in.
the dance she made also happened to be dedicated to her mother who passed away this year.
it was incredibly touching

in fact, the whole experience was.

not just watching the dance, or getting to see my teacher from years ago

but also the experience of going back to a part of my life that i had hated and loved so much

having seen familiar faces, and unfamiliar talent and creativity (the dance program has developed into a wonderful one, with very sophisticated dance happening).

it made me a little nostalgic
a little.

before arriving i began to think about the department administrator. she was not a teacher, but manager of all things administrative in the dance department. i had a fondness for her.
i wasn't quite sure what made me think of her before entering the theater. but i guess i wondered whether or not she remembered me and assumed that she didn't.

upon walking into the theater, she was the first person i saw.
she imediately shouted my name and gave me a warm hug.

i felt grateful for having gone, not only to see my teacher and her dance, and the community i had once been a part of, but also grateful to be reminded that through people, we remain conncetd to the world and ultimately to ourselves.

delayed hearing

the other day my grandmother-in-law said something to me that many people have told me;

something that i already knew, 

but for some reason.... had never really heard until now. 

she said, "take care of yourself, because when you take care of yourself you are taking care of the baby"

i think that before that moment i had always interpreted that advice as "don't play soccer pregnant" or "don't get drunk while pregnant" or "don't drive angry while pregnant" and not that any and all of those things aren't true as well, but i suddenly understood it to mean more. like, "treat yourself to things because the happier you are, the happier the baby will be"

and the moment that i had that thought, i realized that it did not only apply to pregnancy but for the rest of my parenthood.  we are so very much a product of our environments, and as kids our environments are 90% our parents. i realized that the happier i was, the better it would be for my kid, both while it is in my body, but also just as much when it is out of it too. 

 here is my baby "environment" growing at a steady rate...

roses and thorns

when i used to work at a summer camp i would sometimes ask the kids to reflect by sharing their "rose" and their "thorn" of the day

your rose was a part of the day that you particularly liked
your thorn referred to a part that was challenging
and  sometimes we would add in your "rosebud " which was your hope for the following day

i benefit from playing this game with myself even now (or especially now?) as a grown-up(ish).
it's a way to take the time and be thankful for the things that i have/enjoy and acknowledge the things that challenge me. 

somehow in this simple act of acknowledging, i feel like i am working toward making myself better equipped to handle those challeneges, or more aware of how to then avoid them.

this past week had a great many roses and thorns.

seeing people that i miss and love and getting to spend time with them were amoung the roses.
as was going out to see dance at the annenberg, hear stories at first person arts (the philly equivalent of the moth in new york) and seeing my newer and older dog finally enjoying each other's company and playing together. all these things remind me that i am a person who thrives on conncetions - to people, animals, ideas, i like to be engaged in the world.

amoung the thorns were being preoccupied with what other people thought about something i did or said, being tired, and feeling a sudden and dramatic loss of control over my feelings for a little over 24 hours. these things remind me that i am also a very emotional person - those emotions are responsible for the wonderful highs that i can have but also for the devastating lows. i am learning that perhaps, as a friend wrote recently, the best way to manage those emotional moments is not fight them, but to let them pass through me. like a cool breeze that i know will not leave me frozen, but is fleeting; making its way through time and space it happens to cross my path just long enough for me to feel it, and then let it go.

resilience of nature

the changing of the seasons (mostly spring and autumn) inspire reflection.
from which clothing to rotate into use
to pondering the life cycle, the forces of nature and questions about spirituality or even religion,
i love these moments of change.
just like the buds bursting out into the sunshine, i feel like i am awakening from a slumber of  grey, ready for color and heat and life.

having my pregnancy advance in this particular season is especially inspiring. i have been reading about childbirth in preparation of this amazing miracle.
like the flower growing despite the rock in its way, i feel ready to let my body do the magical work of nature.

what they say

if you try reading about pregnancy, and all the phenomenon surrounding it, you may find a variety of surprising nuggets of information
these are some that i have found to be true:

first trimester:

• the term "morning sickness" is a twisted joke - it lasts all day
• feeling like you are going to collapse from exhaustion or throw up from...... anything (including fresh air) is bad enough - it is made worse by the fact that your pregnancy is still a secret and you feel the need to hide your misery (some of us thrive on sharing it)
• you will become very fond of eating saltines and drinking ginger ale 
• you might fall asleep mid-sentence
• your boobs get bigger

second trimester:

• you will have 50% more blood pumping through your body and can sometimes feel it...like a super hero
• your hair and skin can get dramatically nicer/healthier
• you will have to pee (and by have to i don't mean want to, but HAVE to) sometimes only five seconds after having gone. sometimes you might even wet yourself if you're not concentrating during a cough or sneeze
• a variety of things will change color and sensitivity on your body. 
• your sex drive could increase or decrease and both are said to be normal...
• your gums will bleed more regularly/easily (weird one...i guess from increased blood?)
• you will be able to feel the baby move inside of you, and it's one of the most mind-blowing things on the planet
• people will be able to tell that you are pregnant without you necessarily telling them and you might feel like part of a special club when women look and smile at you
• your boobs will get even bigger 

third trimester:

....because i am only starting the 3rd trimester now, i can't say much about it yet. but i can share a couple of things i have recently experienced or read about...


you're not supposed to lay on your back anymore...
you are so visibly pregnant that the unsolicited advice and comments about what you do and don't do increase
you also still feel like part of the special club (i got my first seat offered to me on the subway!)
you might get the urge to "nest" (in my case that and read a lot about labor)
your baby can respond to light (i haven't tried that experiment)
your baby can hear you (i have no proof but i believe it)
i am assuming your boobs just keep getting bigger...insane

while the timing of many things in my life coming up are not ideal - potentially moving, switching jobs, distancing from family etc there is also something so nice about how this pregnancy is developing right in line with the changing seasons. spring always makes me feel euphoric. this year's is making me feel especially grateful.

above the earth

the past several times that i have sat myself down to write something,
i just can't seem to articulate whatever it was that i had been thinking about before sitting down...
or maybe i just can't think of anything to begin with.

many times i will open up a post,
write only a title,
or perhaps a single sentence.
but unable to elaborate, i close it up, and sometimes come back to it later,
but mostly i leave these unfinished posts in cyber space for months before just deleting them.

today, as i sat with a window seat to an expansive view of the earth below me i thought of so many things to write about. and then hoped i would remember them all...

• i thought about the last time i had been on a plane by myself...i couldn't quite remember when that was (maybe my trip to new zealand three years ago right before starting my less virtual and more actual relationship with erk?)
• i thought about the next time i would fly by myself...i can't imagine when that would be...(when the current bun in the oven and the next however many more are grown up?!)
• i thought about how many kids i would have, where we would live, what my life would look like the next time i flew by myself...
• i thought about how the clouds looked like so many other things from this plane-window perspective; snow covered mountains or a forest of cauliflower
• i thought about how so many things can "look" different depending on ones' perspective
• i thought about my haircut that i got earlier that week. how i go to this same woman more because i like to talk with her than because of the haircuts she gives me
• i thought about how important relationship are. 
• i thought about how funny it was that the last post i had attempted to write was about my friends/friendships in general...but that i didn't get very far beyond the first line and that now i have just begun to a read a book that so nicely praises female friendships; that this writer had struck a chord with me and said (in part) what i had thought about saying but didn't quite know how about the value of her female friends in her life. 
• i thought about how beautiful manhattan looked as we were taking off. how the bird's eye view, shaped just like the subway maps, long a skinny, hugged by water on every side with a big patch of green in the middle, was like seeing the sistine chapel for the first time after seeing so many recreations of it in anticipation: sort of surreal in it's super-realness
• i thought about how silly the jenny mcarthy book on pregnancy was, but how there were these small nuggets of truth that i appreciated. like how she claims that a pregnant woman cannot hold her pee - this truth became real to me as i found myself waking up TWO passengers beside me (i never do that) so that i could crawl out from my window seat and make my way to the mini plane bathroom before  relieving myself rather anticlimactically.  (fyi, when you are pregnant you might feel like you are about to wet yourself, and then discover that you have nothing more than two drops of urine that were taking your body hostage)
• i thought about trains of thought and following them back
• i thought about writing this post
• i thought how ironic it was to have such a beautiful and vast view of the world, from such a small, stuffy and stagnant place (have i mentioned how much i don;t like sitting on planes despite my love of traveling?)

i thought about a lot of things and wondered how much of it i would remember, 

but not only for this post, more generally

to keep in mind and use or ignore for what my father so appropriately reminded me, is not a rehearsal.