cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
The spring before I found out I was pregnant with my first child I was at a craft fair with my best friends. I came across a booth that was selling baby girls clothing. There was this lace dress. It was frilly and girly and perfect. I bought it. I wasn’t pregnant yet. We weren’t…
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Standing at my sink mid-day in the soft sun, I tend to the bowls and pans used to make banana bread. The oven heats the sugar, flour, eggs, yogurt, and slivers of banana nestled within its crumb. An aroma like a holiday morning at grandma’s lingers in the air. I choose Christy Nockel’s “Be Held”…
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I remember using a black felt tip marker, writing the words, “baby due” and circling March 9th on the calendar that lay by the phone on our kitchen counter. There is nothing quite like the first time you see those two pink lines.
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I place a hand on my heart and a hand on my belly. I take a deep breath in and say, “How can I best nurture and honor and serve you today?”
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I took four tests. Four. I couldn’t believe it. Yet, two weeks later I saw a tiny heartbeat, keeping rhythm with the blood already flowing through his or her teeny tiny blueberry-sized body. The sonographer printed out three pictures for me to take home. I tucked them away in my purse and pulled them back…
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At the ripe old age of 35, I am, to the medical community, of “advanced maternal age.” At my first OB appointment, my doctor warned me that I may hear the term “geriatric pregnancy” every once in a while. I think I sprouted a few gray hairs just in that one appointment.
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“It is hard for you, little one,” said Aslan. “But things never happen the same way twice.” —Aslan, the Lion, to Lucy, the child, Prince Caspian, C. S. Lewis Things never happen the same way twice, dear one. I am a thirty-one year-old woman (Jessie), I have been married to my husband (Mikey) for almost…
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Chris caught the flu near the beginning of my second trimester with Asha. At the time our home was under construction in an attempt to restore decades of mold and wood rot that we unknowingly inherited. Our first house, once a hopeful purchase, had turned into a homeowner’s nightmare, and we could not wait to…
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The perks of getting married later in life are that you get to watch your friends do it first. I watched my friends one-by-one, get married and start families. They have kindly invited me into their homes and into the lives of their precious little people. This honor holds a deep, aching place in my…
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My friend Bonnie called shortly after returning from Haiti, following the January 2010 earthquake that hit just south of Port-au-Prince, leaving an estimated 230,000 dead. “I have to go back,“ said this tenacious woman with a deep heart.
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