Not much to say

Petey's Birthday Punkin Hat

Pattern: Kurbis baby hat from Sonnentaler
Yarn: Vanna's Choice in Terra Cotta and Kelly Green
Needles: size 7 dpn

Started this last night and finished this morning. The only mods were the yarn substitution, and the fact that I used size 7s for the whole project. I think it turned out adorable, and I plan to use the rest of the yarn to make one for Cali, too.

I finished it literally on the way to the birthday party (which, appropriately, was at the pumpkin patch) so there was no time for any good finished object photos, but this is a cute picture nonetheless.

Two years ago...

...I wrote this post. How things have changed. Proof that life moves on, change does happen, one day when you least expect it. Happy birthday, Little Pete. Your auntie loves you so much. I'll never forget that rainy October morning when I held you for the first time and danced with you to the radio in the kitchen.

Rainstorm

It's storming all over California today. Between energetic bouts of rain, the wind blows in warm and restless gusts. My heart sings out to this weather--I've loved autumnal rainstorms all my life--but my soul feels worn and tired. I, myself, am as unsettled and groundless as the wind, looking for something to hold on to, waiting for the weather to settle. I'm desperate for change.

It all makes me rather melancholy. Last night the power went out, again, and for some reason I panicked, lying in the dark silence, listening to the wind tapping at the window. I felt alone in a void; not even the soft brush of Cali's hair against my cheek or the deep regular breathing of my husband next to me made me feel any less isolated. I prayed for the power to come back on, for the glow of the bedside lamp and the soft whirr of the ceiling fan.

For some reason all this darkness, of thought and feeling, is making me think back on my life's most contented moments. I sort through them, like a mental stack of photographs, as if looking at them enough will unlock the secret to happiness in my present.

Most of these memories are not extraordinary in and of themselves, they're simple moments, some even mundane, but they each hold a specific feeling of serenity that I would do almost anything to recapture.

Stepping off a curb in front of an antique shop in a little Texas hill country town, the notes of the Stones' "Dead Flowers" drifting on the hot evening air from a dancehall nearby.

Leaning against an overturned boat on a Spanish beach smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and watching the sunrise over the Mediterranean.

Taking a hot shower in the first apartment my husband and I lived in together, and having him bring me a glass of wine.

Driving home from work one evening back in Santa Cruz and seeing the bonfires dotted along the beach.

Making love on white sheets while gauzy curtains blew in the breeze.

I study these moments, trying to put a mental finger on what about them was so exquisite, while other, more outwardly remarkable moments, fell short. I wonder if I will ever learn to be happy.

Night Workers

If I were a poet, that's what I'd write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. Men who loaded trains, emergency room nurses with their gentle hands. Night clerks in hotels, cab drivers on graveyard, waitresses in all-night coffee shops. They knew the world, how precious it was when a person remembered your name, the comfort of a rhetorical question, "How's it going, how's the kids?" They knew how long the night was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers lived without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare.

-from White Oleander by Janet Fitch

I've always loved this passage in Fitch's book, having been a night worker of one sort or another for most of my life. I come by my preference for being up at odd hours honestly; my mother was a night nurse for years, and even before she graduated nursing school and began working true graveyards, she would stay up late, especially when my dad was traveling for work, and she would keep me up in bed with her. I'm rather famous in family circles for having entertained everyone with my Ed McMahon impression ("Heeeeeeeere's Johnny!") at three years old.

All my life I've been most productive during the hours when most of the rest of the Western Hemisphere is asleep. I've written many a college paper, organized a kitchen cabinet, knitted a sock and even labored with Cali at three in the morning. I remember a night, long ago, when I was travelling in Europe. I got off the train in an underground station in Barcelona, and came up into a street filled with music, dancing and revelry. I asked around to find out what time it was, and to my surprise found out it was four in the morning--on a weekday! I felt like I had come home to my people. I still have an especial fondness for Catalonia and the late-night hours of its citizens.

A couple of years ago, after years working as a bartender, I took a true third shift job in the emergency room, and found the real truth in Fitch's words. It is impossible to hang on to illusions when you spend night after night looking into the eyes of the dying, the suicidal, the desperate and afraid. What illusions can be left when you've seen the reality of the homeless and drug-addicted who come to ask for a prescription for a sandwich? The elderly for whom an ER nurse is the first person to change their blood and feces-soaked diapers in days? The wild-eyed and grief-stricken mother who would give everything she had to see her child take another breath? No, there are no illusions after one has seen such things.

Emergency room workers, especially those on nights, are a hardy and humorous bunch. They have to be, to keep coming back to clean up blood and vomit while the healthy, in body and mind, sleep. You would never know from their crass jokes, and careless demeanor how each incident adds another grain of sand to the weight they carry in their chests.

At six am, after the last cup of coffee has been drained, the half-eaten donuts thrown in the trash, the report given to the freshly showered and shampoo-smelling day staff, they leave and get in their cars. The wry smiles fade from their faces, the upright and gritty posture slumps. They drive home through the misty dawn thinking of the night just passed. And alone in the car, with no one to share with, the humor and bravado ebbs, leaving sadness and exhaustion. And when they get home, they hug their children tight.

February No-Longer-Pregnant Lady

Pattern: February Lady by Pamela Wynne
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in Cavern

When I first started this sweater, I chose it with my big pregnant belly in mind, but as you can see, the sweater's finally done, and the belly is now a laughing, crawling, mischievous, six-month-old.

My Ravelry notes tell me that this poor little sweater sat dormant for nearly eight months waiting for its second sleeve to be bound off and its ends sewn in. And it's finally been done.

I am so happy with how it turned out. It fits just beautifully, although I'm a little worried about stretching, what with the cotton content in the yarn. Hopefully the fact that the yarn has already been washed (it's frogged and salvaged yarn from another project) will minimize that.



I knit the smallest size on size 7 needles for an even slightly smaller size, and I'm glad I did. I prefer a snug, cropped look for this sweater.

I've been saving these pewter-looking buttons for this sweater, and I think they suit it perfectly.



Overall, a perfect, versatile little fall coverup.

Mother

Hands cool and dry

Brushes hair off a small forehead

Heart heavy with the sweet piercing love

That makes beauty something to weep over

How easily she could lay her life down

For this child

She lives for its peace

Its happiness

She shares her body with it

Her belly a pillow

Her breasts comfort

Their milk nourishment

Her voice a serenade and a promise of safety

She wishes sometimes that she were the child

Securely sleeping its milk-scented dreams

Untouchable to the world outside

Bed is too small for my tiredness...

Bed is too small for my tiredness,
Give me a hilltop with trees.
Rock me to sleep in a cradle of dreams,
Send me a lullaby of leaves.

-Anonymous

Blackberry Ice Cream Socks

I thought I'd start off the month of October, and my goal to blog every`day, with my first finished object in months. Meet the Blackberry Ice Cream Socks.

Pattern: Spring Forward by Linda Welch, Knitty Summer 2008
Yarn: Wildfoote Luxury Sock Yarn in Lilac

True to form, I've had these socks finished for quite a while, right up to the toe grafting, which I hate (and which is why the toes look so lumpy and messy). They've been traveling around in my purse, with their sad little toes still attached to double pointed needles. I've even tried them on for people, the needles sticking out of my toe tips like some sort of weird curtain rods for socks. It took my new Blogtoberfest resolution, and the need for a motivating first post to finish the darn things. And voila!

I love them. They fit perfectly, they were fun to knit, and the pattern was super easy to memorize. They are named because their color so closely resembles my favorite end-of-summer treat: homemade blackberry ice cream. In fact,I had it all planned out in my head how I would do the finished object photos with a bowl of blackberry ice cream, just to be, you know, cute. But alas, there was no blackberry ice cream for me this summer. I went out picking blackberries with my sister and nephew, got a whole delicious tub of them, and then forgot to put them in the freezer before I went out of town that weekend, and they were spoiled in the fridge by the time I got back. So these socks will have to satisfy me until I can try again next summer.

I'm going to try to add some more detailed photos tomorrow, but this was all I could get before the sun went down and my husband went to work.

Birth

On the night you were born, your uncle says it was perfectly clear. He and your cousin Petey saw the stars in the cold night sky while they walked home to their house in the middle of the night after you finally made your entrance. You and I were too busy, of course, to be admiring the spring night, but I like to know the stars were out in full force, spilled out like silver glitter on dark velvet, to welcome you to the world.

In the days and weeks after you were born, I thought a lot about your birth. I wrote out a detailed birth story, that broke down the stages and timing of the contractions, the progression of dilation, and length of each stage of labor. But now, exactly six months after your birth, what stays with me are brightly muddled images, in no particular order, and bearing little relation to one another. The sound of the fish tank burbling as I lay on the red couch in early labor. The cold and oily lipstick taste of the cherry ice cream and castor oil milkshake I drank early the morning before you were born. Hot water on my back and the cold glass of the shower wall on my forehead as I leaned against it, rocking through a contraction in a candlelit bathroom. Intense, chaotic, all-consuming pain, without language, and without bearing, my only anchor the flame glowing behind Our Lady of Succor's serene and unruffled gaze.

The moment I reached down and felt the damp, warm, solid slickness that was your head emerging, and realized with a sudden shifting of consciousness that it was you, my little baby daughter, I was trying to push past that seemingly insurmountable barrier, and not some nameless thing.

Because I was still coping with intense contractions and a retained placenta, I did not get to hold you for very long right away, but I do remember, very clearly, those first few moments after you emerged. I remember asking, before I could help myself, "Is it really a girl?" And I remember them handing you to me, and holding your soft, damp self against my bare skin. But what remember most is your eyes, wide and clear and dark blue, looking around in wonder at the new world you had become part of. They were not like many newborn eyes, bleary and unfocused. They were perfectly alert. Just like now, you were determined not to miss a thing. After those first few minutes, your Daddy held you, while I finished birthing the placenta, and was sutured, half listening to the excited cacophony of voices around me. I heard people calling relatives, and feet pounding up the stairs to to show you to everyone, or perhaps to bring them all down, I don't know. I heard you crying a little, and I heard my mom talking with the midwives about the birth. I learned that you had "busted out" with your little fist in the air, the other pressed against your cheek. Mostly I enjoyed being able to finally lay back and rest after many many hours of hard work.

I often wonder if or what you remember from that night. I used to tell you, when you were still in my belly, that when the day came that you were ready to come out, it might be hard, and it might hurt for both of us, but that we would be in it together. No matter how hard it got, I wanted you to know that you weren't alone; that it wasn't just me or just you facing this unknown and sometimes frightening transition, but both of us. This isn't just my story, but yours, too. You won't ever be able to tell me how long you remembered it, or what form those memories take, but I like to think that they are and will forever be a part of your subconscious. A fleeting trace of the warm closeness of the womb, the pressing intensity of our bodies working together to bring you forth, the cold shock of the air on your naked body as you slid into the midwife's hands, and maybe even somewhere back in your mind, like a word in a foreign language long-forgotten but still on the tip of your tongue, you'll remember the love and joy in my eyes looking at you for the first time.

Six years ago today....

we were newlyweds.

Do you remember how we spent the evening after the wedding walking around by the boardwalk, hand-in-hand, looking for a place to get a drink? I remember thinking how surreal it was that we had just done this enormously huge thing and that no one around us had any idea. We got tacos from Las Palmas and ate them in our hotel room.

Tonight, we made tacos ourselves and spent the evening cuddling on the couch with our little baby girl. It was a simple day--no lavish gifts, expensive dinner or champagne, but it was happy. And it was spent with my two favorite people in the world.

I love you. Here's to the next sixty years.

Small Hands in the Dark

The power has been out at our house for almost 36 hours. There is a weakness in the cable somewhere, and they couldn't find where, so they finally had to put in temporary electric poles and put in cable above ground while they dig up the whole street to find where the problem was. We finally have power again tonight, but yesterday night it was out.

I don't usually sleep in complete darkness. There's usually a hall light on, so when I wake to nurse Cali (who sleeps in bed with me), it's in the half-light. Last night, though, it was black as pitch. When Cali woke in the night to nurse all I could feel were her hands feeling around at me. In a way it was a whole different experience, nursing her by touch alone, almost deeper and more present. I was completely aware of her little hand searching for my face and feeling my nose and lips in the dark. I could feel her solid, plump little body up against me, and smell the almondy scent of her head. It was almost like being pregnant again in a way, that unseen knowledge of another's presence; loving and mothering by touch alone. Her hand brushing my face reminded me so much of the slight fluttering movements I first felt in my belly that it made my heart ache. This time I have with her, as she is now, is so fleeting. The time I had when she was inside me, already gone. She grows more and more into her own person every day, and I love seeing her grow and develop, but I will always miss that time when it was hard to tell where my body stopped and hers began.

Things that have happened since I last posted:

1. I gave birth at home to a beautiful baby girl.

2. I learned what it feels like to have your heart live outside of your body.

3. I lactated through my scrubs at work and had to walk around with a big wet spot on my boob for several hours--let's face it, the strategically placed name badge wasn't fooling anyone.

4. I have completed not a single knitting project.

5. I have become completely fascinated with the French Revolution after reading a biography of Marie Antoinette.

6. I survived a deep and debilitating depression that reduced my life to fractured and scattered pieces.

7. I found the strength to begin to put the pieces back together, and began to build something much stronger, more enduring, and beautiful than I had before.

8. I cried a lot, and listened to my baby cry a lot. Sometimes we cried together.

9. I've developed a whole new appreciation for sleep.

10. I became a mother (something which, while resembling #1 on the list, is not the same thing at all).

Finished Object: Blackrose Socks

Pattern: Blackrose Socks by Suzi Anvin, Knitty Winter 2008
Yarn: Zitron Trekking (XXL)
Started: January 13, 2009
Finished: January 19,2009

I finished these quite a while ago, but due to the unwieldy nature of my physique lately, making it nearly impossible to get a good camera angle of my own feet, I have been unable to get any photos up of the finished object. Overall, I love how these turned out. the pattern was fun, interesting to knit, and pretty quick. Because I'm a tight knitter, I went up a needle size (I used 3 instead of 2) to get the appropriate gauge, but I probably could have knit them with the 2s and had them fit better---I have pretty narrow feet and ankles. They stay up for the most part, and look nice, but they're not as snug as I would like, and they stretch when they're worn or washed. I loved the yarn; the colors are gorgeous and it's wonderfully soft and warm, if a bit prone to the fuzzies. I'd definitely use it again.

Belly Update

Thirty-two weeks:



This is going to be just a quick blog update...this picture was taken on Sunday, a day before i came down with the worst stomach bug of all time. It's had me pretty much bed-ridden for the last three days.

Anyway, I have some FO shots of my Blackrose socks to show, as well as progress made on my February lady sweater (which is what I decided to make out of my frogged cardigan). I've finished the yoke and am working on the lace body. It's going pretty quickly, so I hope to have it finished soon. I'm also ordering the rest of the yarn I need for my Pfeiffer Falls hooded scarf, which I really want to finish as well. I'm also ordering some lovely cashmere-cotton blend fingering that I found on closeout on WEBs for a baby blanket which I have only two months to knit, so I'm looking forward to starting that as well.

Sorry, not too much of excitement, what with the stomach flu and all, but i promise some juicy knitting photos soon.

Until then, if you get the stomach thing that has been going around, I promise you, you're not dying, even though it feels like it.

Black Bean Chili

Last night I made a big pot of chili, one of my husband's favorite meals, and one of the first things I learned to cook after we were married. Since then, I've become a much more accomplished cook (if I do say so myself), and my chili is one of my best creations, as I've had nearly six years to perfect it. Although I originally learned to cook chili from a recipe, it has since been so completely changed and adapted, that it is a recipe I consider truly my own. This is how I make it:

Beef and Black Bean Chili

2 lbs ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1-3 jalapenos, minced (depending on how spicy you want, and how hot the peppers are)
3 tablespoons chili powder, or more according to taste
1 tablespoon ground cumin
4 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes
3 oz dark unsweetend or bittersweet chocolate
1 1/2 tablespoons molasses
3 14.5 oz cans black beans, rinsed and drained
salt
grated cheese

In a large stock pot or dutch oven brown ground beef until no longer pink, breaking up meat with a spoon as it cooks. Drain off most of the fat, leaving about 1-2 tablespoons to cook the onion in. Add onion, garlic and jalapenos, cook until onion is tender. Add chili powder and cumin, mix and cook until fragrant, about 30 sec to 1 minute. Add tomatoes, and one tomato can full of water, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Add chocolate and molasses, stir until melted and incorporated. Salt to taste, also add more chili powder if needed. Simmer for about an hour. Add beans and simmer for another 15 minutes to half hour, or until desired thickness.

Serve with grated cheese and cornbread if you like.

I'm lucky enough to have an excellent source of local free-range beef that is quite affordable, so I cook with more beef than I would otherwise. (I'm very wary of non-organic or otherwise conventional factory beef.) If your family doesn't eat beef, this recipe can easily be made with ground turkey. When I make it this way, however, I usually use pinto beans instead of black beans, since I think that they're milder and more complimentary to turkey. If I use turkey, I also start the recipe by browning about 4 slices of chopped bacon in the pan, and then cooking the turkey in the bacon fat, which adds a deeper flavor--of course, you can skip that if you want a leaner chili.

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In knitting news, I've nearly finished the Blackrose socks--I just have to finish the toe decreases on the second sock and then graft the toe. I still haven't been able to get the right yarn to continue my Pfeiffer Falls scarf, so I'll have to order it, and in the meantime, I'm thinking of knitting a cardigan out of some Brown Sheep Company Cotton Fleece in black that I'm planning to frog out of an unsuccessful cardigan I made a year ago. Any suggestions for a cardigan pattern appropriate for that yarn that would look nice in black?

January Socks

The Pfeiffer Falls hooded scarf has been put on hold until I can get more yarn--yes, I committed the cardinal sin of starting the scarf without the requisite amount of yarn, thinking that something like Lion Brand Solid Wool would be easy to come by...even if the dye lot ended up slightly different. Imagine my surprise when I went back to Michael's last week and found the entire yarn aisle completely decimated with no wool of any sort to be found. Apparently they had a huge after holiday sale that I missed. The lady there was very vague about when they might be getting more. I've been checking back and so far, no luck. Looks like I may have to order it online.

In the meantime I've been knitting the Blackrose Lace Socks from this winter's Knitty. I want to knit more socks this year--hopefully a pair per month, though with all that's going to be on my plate, I'm quite flexible on that goal. I started the first of this pair night before last and I've already finished and casted on the second.



Isn't the colorway beauteous?



It's the Zitron Trekking (XXL) in an unnamed gorgeous purpley variegation. I love the yarn. No pooling, and the color changes are subtle , which I like. I can't wait until they're finished.

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On another note, I want to thank all of you for the comments on my last post. I can't believe the kind words from such virtual strangers. I'm feeling better this week, and being able to share some of that in words, and have such thoughtful responses definitely paid a part in that. I really look forward to reading more of your blogs and getting to know you better.

Happiness

A group of friends and I were talking the other day, and the question came up: are you happy? What does happiness mean anyway? Most of us agreed that it is not a state of constant bliss and excitement, but rather a state of peace and acceptance of one's life. Of not constantly wanting to move on to the next thing, or constantly wishing for something new and better.

I do not think I can describe myself as a happy person by these standards. It's not because I'm thy type of person who wants a lot of stuff; in fact I'm satisfied with very simple things. I'm rather a homebody and like most to be at home with my husband, or with close friends or family. I don't have lots of friends, but the ones I have are very dear to me. I like to putter around my house, cook and knit. I like my job, and I'm excited about becoming a nurse one day soon. I love my husband more than anything and can't imagine my life without him. And the baby--well, it brings tears to my eyes every time she moves. The very idea that she's here, that I'm able to actually grow her in my belly, that she will be my daughter, really and truly, is a miracle to me after more than three long years of waiting for her to come.

Yes, I know I have many blessings. and yet this constant cloud of anxiety and hopelessness follows me throughout life. In all honesty, we are in sort of a crisis phase, on of those periods where things are about to get either much better or much worse, and the anxiety is worse than usual. But this isn't a feeling unique to those difficult times in life. This is a feeling that is with me more often than it is not. And I'm starting to wonder if it is really the stress of life, or something inherent in me that is wrong. I'm tired of always waiting for things to get better, especially now that I have so many things that I've wanted for so long. On the other hand, I wonder why new difficulties have sprung up to ruin the sense of contentment I hoped to have. Most of all, I worry that my negative thought will somehow affect the baby, that she is doomed to some kind of melancholy existence because I didn't think happy enough thoughts when she was forming. I worry that my depression and anxiety will keep me from being a good mother. I worry about my husband, who is under his own stress, and try to be positive and not make things worse. I'm tired of being sad and afraid all the time.

I took the beach grass photo above almost exactly a year ago, on a walk on the beach with the Mister. It seems so peaceful and happy to be walking on the beach with my husband and my dog--I remember it as a good day. But was it? Did I let the day be clouded by thoughts and worries? Sadly, I probably did. Can I learn to get to a place where I feel at peace with myself, and with the present? I want a peaceful and open heart, and the ability to accept the bad with the good. Is this something some are born with, or something we have to learn? Is it something I can learn?

Odds and Ends

The Pfeiffer Falls aka New Mama Scarf is coming along nicely, although I think I'm going to have to add at least two or three more repeats on each side of the scarf body to get it to the length I want. I'm working on the second half of the scarf part, so I'll probably have to go back and add more length to the other half before I graft them together. I feel like I should have more done since I've been sick with a terrible cold all weekend, stayed home from work and had plenty of time to knit, but pretty much just slept on the couch and watched bad TV. Today, I felt much better, but I spent most of the day tidying up the house which had somehow degenerated into a wreck over the three days I was couch-bound and finally taking down my Christmas tree, which was a huge relief.

The bigger news today is that we got a new pellet stove for our living room. It's a beautiful restored stove that looks like a woodstove, except no chimney. I'm so excited because we don't have central heat, so we had to use very ineffective and expensive space heaters to try to heat the house, but mostly we were just freezing because we didn't ant a ginormous electric bill. However, I really wanted to find an effective heating solution before the baby's born. The hearth we built is still only plywood; we're going to tile it after the wood we used to build it completely dries, so I didn't take any pictures. But it is certainly nice to have a warm place to curl up and knit.

Dear Baby

You have been growing inside me for seven months now. When I first found out you were in there, I thought I would write about you all the time, and tell you how wonderful it was that you were here inside me, and to be able to tell you all about what it was like when you were in my tummy. But even though I talked to you constantly, and was continually amazed by the little miracles that happened daily inside me, I did not keep my resolution of writing it all down for you. So today, the first day of the year in which you will be born, I thought I would keep a little bit of that original intention.

The first thing I want to tell you is how very much I missed you when you weren't here. It may seem odd that a person could miss someone they'd never met, someone that hasn't even been put into the world yet, but I did. I missed you so much it was unbearable at times. Even though there were times I worried that you would never get here, deep down, I never lost the sense that you were out there somewhere, my little spirit baby, circling around my life, waiting for the right time to be born. Your daddy and I used to ask your little baby cousin, "where's our baby?", and he would look purposefully up with his big blue eyes, just as if he could see you and that let me know that you were out there waiting to be born.

One day last summer, I found out that you were finally here, in this very universe, this very world, right here with me...inside me, in fact. I almost couldn't believe it. Your daddy and your uncle and your auntie were so happy that you were coming, and your Poppy was so excited, that when I told him he danced me around right in the middle of the bleachers at a baseball game! That's how much everybody missed you before you even got here.

The first time we saw a picture of you, you looked like a little jelly bean, and your heartbeat was so strong that we nicknamed you Thumper, and that's what we call you, even now that we know you are a little girl, and we know what your name will be. It's even more fitting now that you are thumping around inside me! What exactly are you doing in there anyway? The next time we saw you, you looked like you. We could see your little nose, and your perfect round head, your little toes like sweet peas lined up in a pod. This is what you looked like. I think it looks like you are rubbing your hands together gleefully thinking what mischief you're going to cause when you come out.



Now you're two whole months bigger than you were then, and you constantly remind me you're there by doing your special gymnastics inside. Your daddy likes to pretend you are a little intellectual wearing a beret, curled up inside my belly with an existential book and a chai latte, comfortably waiting until it's time to come out and tell us all the answers to the universe. But I know that, even though I have no doubt how smart you are, you are actually quite the athlete. Either that, or you like to do fancy yoga poses while you read your Sartre.

No matter who you are, the thing I look forward to most this year is meeting you, and being able to touch your skin and smell your head and give you kisses on that funny little nose. But I'm also going to enjoy these last few months of having you being inside of me, here but not here. You, but still part of me at the same time.

Love, Mama