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.

IIt was raining when I left the office on my last day of work. The power had flickered off for a brief instant, giving everyone a thrilling startle in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. At the back entrance, I chuckled with the guard about the automatic doors not working due to the outage as we pushed open the manual ones instead. In my arms I carried a box with the remains of my goodbye cake - almond mocha - and a bag of assorted desk items. Among the items was my office name plate; silver metal printed with my maiden name.

“Maybe one day I’ll show this to my son, and he’ll be interested to hear about his Mama’s life before he was born,” I told my boss. It’s the kind of thing I would have been curious about. You grow up thinking of your parents as your parents, an identity which feels all-encompassing. It’s strange to put any other name for them in your mouth, like something which doesn’t taste quite right, and stranger still to think of your mother as someone with an entirely different last name than the one she has now.

My baby slurped at his bottle with a commendable, if not alarming, focus and ferocity. One would think he hadn’t eaten in ages, when in actuality it was more like two hours. Towards the end of the bottle, his eyes fastened onto mine. He stared in the unabashed way of babies, then his face broke into a smile. I grinned back, my heart melting.

“What am I going to do, not smile back?” I teased.

My baby spends much time in my arms

Today while nursing he is active

Hands flailing , feet kicking

I ask, Why so busy?

Tell him, One day you will learn how to do things while eating;

a sandwich or smoothie while you walk, drive, work

But now is not that time

I like to imagine the grass is super tall when I lie down in it, so tall no one can see me. The neighbors had all gone back inside. It was strange to see them all in their yards and at their doors looking at our house, but I guess I’d look too and want to know. The ambulance didn’t use their siren when they left. That’s because it wasn’t an emergency anymore, Daddy said. He was away when it all happened.

Lend me your candy cigarettes

White smoke to cancel black regrets

Steady now, too sober still

No drink can swallow down this pill

I didn't become comfortable with swearing until I entered the mission field.

Before that, only the very occasional "shit!" would escape my lips in shocking or frustrating moments. I recall times of embarrassment when someone else heard, or when I'd admit the tendency at a church small group. People were always surprised by the confession, which just cemented in my mind that I should work harder to replace certain phrases with "oh shoot" or "what the freak". It was what good Christians did, right?

Being a mother means life is
grown
pushed
pulled
nurtured
from your body
An essence given to the world
yet tethered to you; eternally, intrinsically

As a young child, I was convinced there had been a time when I could fly.

One day, I simply remembered; I used to be able to fly. The memory came to me all at once, clicked on as though my brain had tuned into a station which had previously been static. It felt like a dream, yet there was a clarity to it I couldn’t deny. In my mind’s eye I could see the world floating beneath me. I couldn’t go very high or fast, and not outside of the house, details which made me believe firmly in the memory.

I am eating while nursing my baby

Cradled in one arm

He fills my lap

making tiny grunts, squeaks, and gurgles

My dear baby,

You’ll be born when the magnolias are blooming. Softest petals of milk white, grand in size, budding and opening in all their splendor amid waxy leaves. There’s a small magnolia tree in the yard behind our house which caught my attention the other day. I notice growing things. I never realized how many growing things I notice and name until your father noticed and named this trait in me.

My first apartment was so small that if I spread out my arms - fingertips touching one wall of the living room - and then took two shuffling steps in the opposite direction, I could touch the other wall. The bathroom was a shoebox so tiny the sink couldn’t fit and was positioned right outside the bathroom door in the bedroom. Cramped, finicky, and with sketchy neighbors, it was the first place which was fully and truly all my own. I absolutely loved it.

Feeling a baby move inside me is one of the most unique parts of being pregnant. It's unlike anything I could have imagined, and yet is perfectly natural, too. It's almost a kind of secret; how often I feel the tiny yet strengthening movements throughout the day. I can be sitting and taking minutes during a meeting, or having a conversation with someone, or walking down a hall, and no one knows of the barrage of kicks, jabs, and turns happening within. They continue to surprise me. Hello, I think, so active!

Just past the shoreline
there are jellyfish and stingrays, their poison at the ready
there are sharks, certainly

The woman on screen had a beautifully angular face and hair cropped so short it was nearly buzzed. She held her five-month-old baby and spoke rapidly to the camera as she showed her surroundings; the basement of an apartment building in the city of Kyiv crammed with people and holding a meager supply of food for an unknown length of sheltering.