Tonight I found a poem that I wrote in December 2008. It could use an editor, but I like how it feels. It feels like 2008 felt.
The Year
This was the year of surprise and fear and determination and joy:
The year of our marriage
The year of our first son’s birth.
In the first month I found out that I was unexpectedly expecting
Praying and shaking and taking a second test in a grocery store bathroom, then going to see you and surprising myself when I did not break down in tears. It was the beginning of finding strength.
Then there were secret weeks with you and I knowing
And deciding
And planning a future
Being knit together into a family
Then telling our sisters, our families
Then promising
Speaking vows that were – that are – my heart for you
This was the year of laughing and giddiness in our graduate student apartment (which seemed to grow ever smaller as my belly grew larger,
our home and our life full and happy)
Of evenings spent swimming or running or biking or playing games while lying on our stomachs -- until mine got too big to lie on
Then you, returning to work while I slept
Working out your thesis and our future and taking care of me, of us
This was the afternoon when it was time
When you drove me to the hospital and we held our breaths until we heard his little unborn heartbeat
When I tried to be Zen and the Art of Childbirth and I became Jenn and the Art of Epidural
When he was born – quickly, strongly -- amazingly real with his deep dark eyes open and seeing the world for the first time and finding us
When you cut the cord
When you knew his name
When we celebrated, and nursed, and laughed, and did not sleep
And did not sleep
And did not sleep
And sometimes cried, but always laughed
This was the year I became we
