Today, from my friends at Scintilla Project: Write about spending time with a baby or child under the age of two. The challenge: if you're a parent, do not talk about your own child.
It was a wild New Years Day, 2013. My dear friend called me, telling me
her daughter had gone into labor in San Francisco. I was the designated driver
from Bakersfield to San Francisco when the grandbaby was born, so I was now
considered on alert.
A half an hour later, she was getting ready to push and I was running out of the house with the clothes on my back, my purse and very little else.
It took five hours to get there from Bakersfield and we went straight to the hospital. Within an hour I was alone in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit holding a tiny, five pound baby girl. There were no nurses around me, I didn’t have to show identification or wear a special “I am related to this tiny being” bracelet or badge.
Everyone else just let me be with her, holding her, feeding her.
I have a baby longing… well, truth be told I think I’ve had it since I was a toddler and my brother was born. Babies are to be held, loved, watched out for with everything you’ve got.
I couldn’t understand why these hospital people weren’t concerned about leaving me alone with her.
She was so tiny and I truly had no business being there with her.
I rocked her and talked to her, told her how loved she was and how grateful everyone was to finally get to see her. I sent photos home to my friends who know I am baby crazy.
I held her as long as I could, until someone else came along who was supposed to be with her due to actually being related or a nurse, and when I stood up, I was buzzing from happiness.
I haven’t taken the time to write of this until now, but for the past couple weeks, I have felt the energy of rebirth pushing through my pores. It has been an odder than odd six months. When I woke up on January 2 in San Francisco, I remembered I had been there three of the last four years on New Year’s Day.
My love of San Francisco is almost as strong as my baby hunger.
I wondered in my journal why the universe keeps bringing me back here at the start of a new year and now this year, something so remote had happened here.
I said yes to my friend – which most people thought I was some sort of saint for being the driver – and I said Yes again – to hold the baby – and I said Yes to all of it.
Now, I realize I am also saying Yes to this whole rebirthing that is happening to me.
I am agreeing the time is right, I am ready, I am strong, I have lived through enough shaking and shattering.
It is such a gift, the concept of rebirth.
It fills my spirit with joy that isn’t one I can describe with words yet.
What I know is I feel like laundry, hanging on the line, freely dancing and singing and smelling great while every opportunity is open to me. “Where will I go?” response, “Wherever my wearer takes me will be great, and even if other people don’t think its great, the reward is to come back here, to the sunshine, again – as long as I say ‘Yes’.”
Yes.
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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott
