27: Home (Briefly)

Yesterday morning, I came home for the night; I may have driven faster toward my house than I did two days before when I was driving toward my best friend whose contractions were rocking her body.

Everything about the Nelson family growing is wonderful. She has the mothering thing down; her instinct has certainly kicked in. And in those fateful 48 hours of hospital sitting, of Christian cooing, I did not see one foul moment, one frustrated brow furrowed, none of it. She was serene, instinctive, a mama of the highest order.

Watching all that love only made me want to curl up with my own. I missed my husband, my home, my pets. My role in that time was to fill in where needed and to recede when not, and I was blessed to have that role indeed. There's something about being quiet in such a storm of love and triumph that makes one want to turn to one's own heart, one's own daily comfort. It was so good to be enfolded in Ryan's arms, to sigh, and say I've missed you.

Of course, it can't be still here for too long as my to-do list has now grow to astronomical proportions, which is shocking, given that it is summer vacation, but life does go on, apparently, even when you are sitting in the hospital, staring at a seven pound wonder.

Today: oil change, phone call to the vet to reschedule a missed appointment, the garden is overgrown with weeds, and a CSA pick up. And then, a return up north, back to that soft baby skin and sharp baby cry, back to diapers and booties and awe.