Chocolate Cake and Babies

If I could sift out a measure of courage, I would tell you that beneath my honest contentment is a thin layer of loneliness.

I would tell you this is not what I imagined.

I would tell you that every day brings a new worry about how we will shepherd a tiny soul with grace and kindness in this mad, mad world.

I would tell you about friendship, about the people one street over and across the world who remind me how precious it is to be cared for, how simple and lovely.

I would tell you that for all of those cherished tethers, the ties that are strung with vulnerability and meaning, this is still a solitary journey. It is just us two.

I would tell you that when I look in the mirror at the sweet and weighty rounding of my belly, I have never loved myself more.

I would tell you about the curious, unbidden wellspring of connection I feel to life itself - to my mother and grandmothers and the women before them; to towering trees and the ocean’s roar and the night-soaked moon; to the thrum of my own heartbeat.

I would tell you that I’m already mourning the loss of my solitude.

I would tell you about the gentle, easy devotion of a man who loves this wee speck of stardust with a mightiness that leaves me breathless. I would tell you about the tenderness of soft hugs and nightly belly rubs and the warmest hope-sparked eyes. Surely, I think, such fierce father-love bears a sacredness all its own.

I would tell you that I ate three slices of chocolate cake in one day.

I would tell you how the sight of a final, lonesome leaf clinging to a winter-ready branch makes me weep. (Not to worry; this is precisely the kind of thing that makes me weep on an average day.)

I would tell you that for all my mantras and meditations, sometimes I am still scared.