Saint Patrick’s Day 1979

Daffodils bloomed,

breezes turned balmy

and I pulled off shoes,

letting swollen feet tramp across warming earth.

I was pregnant with my first baby….due today.
For weeks I had ached for time to stop,
squeezing myself shut to the coming contractions
and separation,
“relinquish” hanging heavy on my heart.

But today the weather turned,
hadn’t everything somehow changed?
Spring had come with her own dreamy wildness
and waves to ride far beyond the looming loss.

I spent the day sunsoaking
watching the wind gently rock the tire swing I’d played in
not so long ago.

I was newly seventeen,

an unwed mother

with an unwanted chore:

to give my baby to someone who could be what she deserved.

Soon she would come apart from me,

 gone before the leaves flushed out.

Their buds were fat and ready to pop
….like me.

I went quiet with the knowing.

But this day was vivid lovely and it got inside me.

As the sun began to dip low,  a painful storm struck

and hammered down urgency inside my belly,
as grownup voices

began herding me into the night

and toward the hospital.

I couldn’t do this.

It was bedtime and I wanted to crawl under the covers
and cradle the life inside me again.

My body betrayed me,
forcing me into a cold sterile world of tight lips and disapproving eyes.
As my frightened parents gathered my things,
I lunged back inside for just one last moment alone
with the tiny life that had shaken my own with her gentle worth.
I lowered my frame heavy onto bed….sing a last lullaby
but found only tears,
a fragile goodbye.

I followed strong contractions into the night,
returning  home with only fierce memory
of her tiny fingers and face.
But I’m forever marked by her essence,
often swept away by the melody
as it drifts across my heartstrings.

I recognize her song.

Thirty three Springs of her beautiful life
and I honor each of her days.
Today I tenderly comfort the girl who carried her before
she was transplanted into the garden
where she grew and thrived,
those shimmery days when we were just us,
when she was still mine.

(thanks so much for reading along and letting me share this part of my heart with you.)