Saturday, April 14, 2012


This morning I awoke thinking about friendship and who stays and who goes. Over the years there have been flood tides and slack tides of friends. Used to be, at Thanksgiving, there were a lot of people for dinner. Some years I'm alone, deep in grief or with a consuming need for quiet.

This morning, I'm alone with the katz and the goofy dog. I might be alone all day. I might visit a few new babies. My work is so draining, colossal, intimate-I need considerable time to myself.

Midwives are my friends. We understand each other, the stories we harbor and can't really tell to our families, our partners, anyone who doesn't do what we do. And yet, we see each other infrequently, at conferences or meetings. My midwife partners are unique friends. We carry the weight of our client load together. We share the stories our clients tell us, some so heartbreaking and terrible we too feel the pain. In fact, I think we always feel the pain of those in our care. Physical pain is easy. Labor hurts but it doesn't mean we're sick or injured. I find myself getting bigger and bigger during a labor, 'holding' the mother in compassion for her suffering but knowing it will be over. I fill the room with compassion and kindness, for her, for her partner and for her baby. I shouldn't say 'I' really. The room is suffused with compassion and love. And we're all inside it together.

So on this Spring day all the daffs and tulips I planted last year are blooming or about to bloom. The lilac is budded out. All manner of plants are sending out their shoots. The lettuce and spinach are getting bigger. The lake down the hill is shining like a flat blue plate. The mountains shimmer in the distance, snow on their roofs.

The singing world.

3 comments:

Radish King said...

Oh that magnolia! It makes me just shimmer with wonder. My favorite tree. And I noticed the lilac buds yesterday. Fantastic! Last year the lilacs were off schedule they didn't bloom until mid-May. I watched the birth video on your midwife website and it was so amazing the water birth and it made me sad that I didn't have a midwife when Page was born. It would have been so much easier.

Plane bodies. Beautiful and sleek are they not? We in the business call them fuselages ;)

xooox

beth coyote said...

So strange to trasport fuselages on trains! I couldn't understand what I was seeing-until I could.

XXB

Radish King said...

They come from the Renton plant. It must have been weird. I see them on trains sometimes at Golden Gardens and I see engines being transported on the freeway but always late at night. It is weird to see a parade of fuselages during the day. For some reason the usually do this under the cover of dark. Probably for proprietary reasons.
xoxox