My alarm goes off at 6 something a.m. and my bed is peaceful and heavenly warm. So heavenly warm! But reason wins – I can’t face this day without a coffee in peace – so I make my way down to the kitchen, shivering in the cold. When the coffee is ready, the remaining family members have already knocked to tell me to come upstairs three times. Armored with my coffee, I make my way upstairs to face the drill of my kids putting on cloth. The five-year-old is cooperating to my surprise, but the three-year-old is – well, three. She refuses to wear anything but a dress. There are tears and kicks. We head downstairs, the adventcalender needs to be opened and the favorite pair of gloves is nowhere to be found. There are two other options for gloves, both entirely unacceptable for my five-year-old. When we finally leave the house, the loss of time is tolerable, the loss of my patience is absolutely not. „Those kids“, as a friend has put it so wisely one day, „those kids, they just don’t function the way they should“. Ahem. We take a different route than usual, because no-one listens to me and my fingers are freezing, cause guess who happily wears my gloves now? We pass the crosswalk and I silently thank God that it went smoothly, the traffic is so crazy at this time a day. Why, I start wondering, why do we do this to ourselves? Starting the day in such a crazy and stressful way seems nothing but wrong. How can life be this exhausting, right after we woke up?
We arrive at the Kindergarten and even though I don’t usually do this, I take off all the little coats and gloves and heats and kids shoes and put on slippers, because maybe, through a miracle of bending time, I will make it to my appointment in time. Love is sworn, kisses are blown and shortly after, I sit in the waiting room, still breathing heavy from riding my bike in the rain. I look over the skyline of the city, all beautiful and crisp and wonder what this day will bring. My husband will sign this contract today, this contract, that will professionally keep him – and us with him – in this city for the next years. School will start in the fall, will that mean, that those stressful mornings are here to stay?! We will also meet with the bank today, to look into buying a place to live (not that we plan that, but still) and all of this feels suddenly huge and meaningful and also heavy and very, very -uhm, tied down. Oh boy. I suddenly feel the strong urge to pack up my family and leave the country. Then my name is called.
The doctor says: „it will be a bit cold“ and then rubs glibbery stuff on my belly. The room is quiet and dark and the thoughts in my head are still swirling and then – I suddenly see you. I see you. And everything seems to fall into place, seems to quiet down. Somewhere far away, I hear the doctor say „it’s a girl!“ and after that, can’t see or hear anything else anymore. All I see is you. Your perfect form, the bones in your body, the tiny fingers you hold in front of your face. For a moment, you look exactly like your sister, the one, who is crazy about dresses and I feel silent tears dripping down my face and drop on the cushion that is covered with a paper towel. You are here. You are a miracle. Your body is a miracle. And mine is, too. While things have been a wild whirlwind here on the outside, the job commitements, the house hunting plans, the children and the traffic, the thousand little and big troubles of this pregnancy, that drain so much of my energy – all this wild chaos outside and inside? Inside, my body has helped build yours, all those teeny tiny bones of your little spine are in place and all those organs are working. Everything is being build by this secret and miraculous plan my body knows all by itself. While I ache and groan and my head can’t stop swirling, you are being build. Althought I don’t contribute anything consiously, althought I didn’t do anything to earn this.
Thank you, my miraculous and wonderful daughter. My head stopped swirling today and I put it straight into a cloud, dreaming of you and this miracle inside my body, all day long.