chrysalis.
I’ll be taking a walk with the girls; I can feel the crisp white air against my checks. I can finger and squeeze the cold little hands that grip both of mine as we climb the hill behind our house. I can see the sky weave in and out from blue to steel to white back to blue. I watch the eagle soar below the clouds, and then watch another do the same. I can feel slightly in awe that I just saw two bald eagles, but at the same time non-attached. I can sit down with the girls and press my hands against the crunchy moss, feeling the wonder of the frost against the soft of the earth. And I can hear them chattering around me. But it’s all a pleasant blur of loving sound in the background until finally Mia screams at me, MAMA!!! I WANT THE WATER BOTTLE NOW. NOW! My first reaction is to lecture, that is not the polite way to ask for things, Mia. You know that. Then I realize she probably did ask me politely the first couple times. Something tells me her request where part of the chorus of sounds all around me, sounds that just become soundtrack for each moment. I just had no ability to respond to them. My senses are glazed over like glacier from mountain to river; I am frozen in some other plane.
I guess it’s about the right time. I am 35 weeks pregnant now, give or take, and a thick and protective coating has formed around me. I no longer live totally here, present, aware of what happens around me. I live inside this shell. Waiting for the final crack. The unveiling. The birth of my baby, of me, of my whole family. I do all this work, removed and secluded, yet life seems to continue around me.
I am in the chrysalis. And simultaneously I honor this cave-like withdrawal and fight it with all my might. There are still so many things to do; make truffles and peppermint bark, send out packages, shower my circles with love for the holidays; so many projects I want to do with the kids: the solstice wreath, their altar, building a labyrinth in the yard and making sure to gather on the 21st; and then all the little things to get ready for baby: make a mobile, decal the wall with blackbirds flying, washing all the cloth diapers, cleaning, rearranging, smudging this whole place, making meals and freezing them. It’s like this driving force of energy pulls around me, trying to get me to commit in every direction, the words inside my head nag, nest, nest, nest. But the shell, it keeps me from doing much of anything. My heart draws a picture of nesting in a different way: sit down, warm by the fire, hold your belly, breath, chant, cuddle, go for slow walks, make tea…everything else will just fall in place.
I am starting to come to terms with the work I do inside this chrysalis is the real work for this birth, the silent, subtle (yet humungous) work of the inner-world. And that is where I have been living, in that world, doing work I am unable to describe. All I can say is that it’s not heady work. I’m not living in my head, thinking about past or future stories. I am not judging where I have or haven’t been or what I must or mustn’t so. I am not even thinking about the birth, really. I am in some kind of absence of space, but one that is so sweet and satisfying; I find it hard to pull myself up and out of it. It is my own bubble. And even if someone else (or myself) tries to pop it and pull me back into this world, my whole being refuses to oblige. Sure, I will get the water for the girls, throw in a load of laundry, listen to B talk about this or that, read my kids books, but I am only half there. For a second I feel guilty and sad about this, like I am neglecting my life, but I know this is the work of preparing for the journey of this birth. I know its important work; work that rarely gets honored and encouraged or supported in this culture. How many women even get to stop working during this time? How many women get to take time off being a full-time mom while the end of their gestation takes place? I am fortunate in this sense; I don’t work outside the home and right now B is with me, at home, doing all those little things for the girls that I am taking a slight sabbatical from. But in the end (or the beginning of it) this work that I do now, will bring a baby in my arms, and it will bring me once again to the role of Mother.
It’s hard to believe its right around the corner.
It’s hard to believe that the little feet that jab at my ribs and those hands that stretch and poke at my bladder will be in my bed with me, where I will kiss them, smell them and worship the delicate grandness of them. Hands and feet of my newborn tell me I am not mortal, I am indeed Creatrix, I am indeed my own God(dess) and I am blessed to be in the presence of the same.
