While pregnant, there are days when I am ravenous. I awake hungry and never seem to fill. I grow shaky before lunch and can’t suppress the need for a snack before bed. I run a hand along the curve of my belly, where my baby is growing steadily. My body is a vessel, and I am less in control of it than ever before. I cannot know why there are days my body demands more food, or feels sick, or leaves me exhausted. I can only trust the signals it sends me for rest or nourishment, understanding that miraculously, though I have no conscious part in it, my body is developing and sustaining a human being.

I don’t know why your mood can shift like a cloud

why you’re unhappy after breakfast

not wanting to stand on your new step stool and brush your teeth

You’re twenty months and ten days old, my son

and you cannot tell me what pushes sundry feelings to the surface

and you may not even know yourself

For several years (too long in the rearview mirror of life) I worked for a woman who prided herself on saying whatever she was thinking without apology. We were working at our desks in our small office one day when she made a pointed observation.

“You roll your r’s sometimes. Thrrrree!!” she chirped with a laugh like a short bark. “I’m going to call you Little Hispanic Girl.”

“I am Hispanic,” I replied, uncomfortable with the expression of self-satisfied amusement she wore.

Hair mussed

Sleep still slipping

from the corners of my eyes

Coffee piping

Rain chilly, pattering on the tin roof

of the first home which is fully ours.

The autumn afternoon was sunny and crisp. I was playing outside with my one and a half year old son, Ocean, when we heard the hum of an engine overhead.

“Look! It’s a biplane,” I told him, crouching down and pointing to the speck of aircraft skimming through the sky. By accident one day while driving down an unfamiliar road, I’d discovered a small airport on a hill just a few miles from our house. Ever since, I’d taken special note of the single-engine planes which would often buzz overhead, criss-crossing the sky as though sending me a message. Watching with my son, my heart twisted with an old ache.

“Self Storage” read the sign

(a little worn with time, like the best of us).

An intriguing idea, so

I pulled into the parking lot,

meandering inside.

Throughout my day, so often it becomes part of the normal rhythm of motherhood, it’s easy to be prodded by small worries about my young son, Ocean.

“Has he eaten enough? Is he hot or cold? On track developmentally? Sleeping enough? Well-stimulated?”

Many of these worries are vital to his care and are easily remedied or assured. Yet there will always be times I worry in vain. I imagine the worst, only to be surprised by the best.

Most mornings, I put my toddler, Ocean, into the jogging stroller and take him for a walk or run. Normally a bundle of rambunctious energy, on our walks Ocean enjoys just looking around and taking in the morning air, often with one foot popped up on the front railing.

Rain folded the frozen earth in her arms, said

“Let me embrace you awhile. Let us transform.”

A world hard as geode, scintillating. 

Glassy overcoats of ice for all the trees

Lovely changelings, till the branches, with dismay, 

Succumbed: the new weight pulling, cracking, crashing.

At home, I spend a fair bit of time looking through the glass doors onto our back porch and yard. In the mornings, the edge of the sun is just visible as it rises over the tree tops. The light sparkles across silken spider webs strung daintily between the porch railings, evidence of nocturnal work.

In late 2020, I began training in the hopes of running my first marathon. I’d run a half marathon a few years prior and decided to go for the big one. It was both exciting and intimidating. I’d run several 5k’s (3.1 miles) and even more10k’s (6.2). Training for the half marathon (13.1 miles) was a leap. It was a solid two hours of running without a break, so to double that for the full marathon (a whopping 26.2 miles), knowing I’d be running for about four hours straight, felt huge. There was a part of me which didn’t know if I could do it, yet another part of me knew I had to try.

Day 1: It’s a couple of hours after I’ve given birth. In the minutes following the delivery of my son, my breath came in ragged gulps. Seeing my baby for the first time, held aloft between my knees by the doctor, I cried with joy and relief while gasping for air after the great effort of pushing. As I held him to my chest, someone pressed firmly on my stomach until the placenta came out, the afterbirth, and finally I was covered and allowed to sit up. My baby latched onto my breast right away, and I marveled at the utterly new sensation of feeding a human – my son - from my body.

Lightning trembles across the night sky

White punches which glaze the deep blue darkness

in shades of purple

(a bit of royalty, a bit of a bruise).

My annual compilation of songs and albums which became meaningful to me during the previous year.

You’ve heard of goat yoga

a popular trend

For deep breaths and giggles

with downward dog bends

Well then let me share

what I learned of today!

Attempting pilates

while my seven-month played

In Taylor Swift’s most recent music video, “Anti-Hero”, she battles her own sabotaging self-doubt by portraying it as the titular anti-hero version of herself. In one part of the video, the refrain of “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me” is sung in a bubbly voice as Taylor stands on a scale. Beside her, the anti-hero version shakes her head in a judgmental way. In the original video, the camera cuts to the scale, which simply reads “Fat”. The backlash from this one word was immediate. People online labeled Taylor as fatphobic. The hate was so strong, Taylor had the video edited to remove the glimpse of the scale.

Death kindly came to visit me, and though I first was scared,

He has a busy schedule, so to come must mean he cared.

He stood beneath the lemon tree, which never does grow fruit.

The summer sun shone brightly down as we eyed each other, mute.

Once, while I was still single, I sat down and wrote an open letter to my friends who were married, titling the letter “Rickshaws Have Three Wheels And They Work Just Fine”. I had become a little sad and hurt and frustrated by the comments of a couple of friends whom I saw less and less. Each claimed she didn’t want me to feel like a third wheel when it was her, her husband, and me hanging out. Each also said she didn’t want to drag me into the chaos of her life with young kids. In the letter, I laid out what I’d tried to tell them when we did see each other: I enjoyed seeing their kids, and didn’t feel like a third wheel. I just liked their company, no matter who else was around, and was in fact a bit honored to be allowed into the chaos of everyday life.

When I was pregnant, I would think about and want sushi and poké, though not in the give-it-to-me-now way in which I've heard pregnant women describe cravings for things like pickles and ice cream, but in the way of wanting a food I love yet couldn’t currently have. As I drove to work one morning, thinking about food, I recalled a memory from when Andy took me to Hawaii and proposed. It was the last day of the trip and we were filling time before going to the airport. We wandered through a shopping plaza brimming with booths selling anything from trinkets to clothes to food. We began to search for something to eat, when we found it: tucked into a corner at the back of the plaza was a tiny sushi spot. The whole place was merely two counters with stools plus the kitchen. I think it could seat five customers at a time, tops. Immediately, Andy sensed that this was someplace special. We waited a bit until a couple finished and left, then sat down elbow to elbow at the counter.

I didn’t like driving through the storm,

through the thundering heart of it,

Yet made it home

and in the doing,

Found triumph.