Be Here Now (no other place to be)

I'm restless.

Perhaps it's the baby coming.

It IS the baby coming.

I wake up around 4:30 with my mind racing -- thoughts and lists that seems utterly pressing but that in the morning pale and reduce to nothing.

I want to watch movies, read something riveting, eat ice cream, be entertained, be distracted.
I find myself staring at my computer waiting for an email to pop up or for something on the screen to reach out and captivate me, which it doesn't.  Computers aren't very good initiators.

She doesn't have a name yet, but I feel like I can almost see her.  I can't wait to see her.

Today I stood in the kitchen with my hands on my stomach thinking how this is the last time in my whole life I will ever be stretched like this, will ever feel a baby inside of me, will ever trace her movements across my tight skin, or feel her tiny foot beneath the surface.  This stage of life, of creating children, will end, has nearly ended.

And then I will meet and hold an infant, one of my infants, for the last time.  And she will grow into the swift darkening fall days, for us to follow after and begin to discover.

Hurry up and wait is what my mom says when people race ahead, cut her off, and slam on their breaks at the red light in front of her.  Hurry up and wait.  I don't want to hurry, to rush these days when Eden presses her cheek to my stomach to feel her unborn sister hiccup against her cheek.  I want to feel the wait, not just pace my house making longer lists of what I could do to prepare for dinners, fall birthdays, Christmas, what I still need to buy for nursing or pack for the hospital or--

Each day there are moments, sometimes just a few, that I would call grace, when I can feel the paving stones of the present under my feet: sitting nestled on the yellow couch with Silas and Eden leaning against each of my arms (which makes me overheat madly these days) reading The Magic School bus and disappearing into volcanoes; watching Silas dive off the diving board, his ankles haphazardly crossing in midair; listening to the sound of the two of them giggling together in the other room as they wield kitchen tools; studying the freckles that have just emerged on Silas's right cheek; listening to the way words roll in Eden's mouth -- "bebember" and "thus" instead of just.

This Labor Day weekend, I will not be in labor and will be here.  Mason Jennings, in his straight-shooting way, says, "be here now, no other place to be" -- and isn't that it?  There is no other place to be, no other place we can be, just here and just now.