Tonight is band practice. Exploratory guitar strains and vocal commentary drift through the dim downstairs rooms from the attic above, and I wonder to myself if the stirrings and kicks that pulse just beneath my swelling belly are my child's response to the strange chords and voices.
This final week of February marks the first week of my third trimester. It has been a long and difficult month, but interspersed with a handful of happinesses. Mimosas and Mexican baked eggs by candlelight the morning of Valentine's Day, before I left for work. Jonathan in his Mr. Burger trucker hat and blue flannel shirt, improvising a goofy song on his bass guitar for the baby after dinner. The installation of tile and a toilet in our gutted bathroom at long, long last. The first house show for Flowerstalks, and the first time our home has been fit to host since last September. Yellow tulips somehow making the dining room come to life. Today's wonderful stroll with Jeremy through the frozen marshes bordering the Rice Creek trail, cattail rushes tossing the sunshine just ahead of us and rattling brightly in the breeze: the only time of year when one can safely trudge through swampland.
And each day the thrilling pulses and flutters of new inscrutable human life lifting me out of myself, into wonderment and joy.
