On Birthdays

It came to me clearly on Thursday during my first yoga class in awhile.  It was two days before my Birthday, and I was trying to imagine what my mother was doing two days before I was born.  Suddenly it hit me, a picture from nowhere, simple, like a frame in instagram, this snapshot of nine tiny pounds of pink flesh, trailing a magnificent, ethereal fan, vast and absolutely complete.  By all accounts the thing is invisible, but I swear to you, I got a glimpse.  And it was beautiful enough to make you cry right there on the yoga mat.

By no rhyme or reason that the mind could ever figure, my own Birthday was reborn, eight years ago when Chloe pushed her way through the passage on March 3rd, two days after my March 1st.  And from here on out, my Birthday will always be marked as two days before a birth.

This odd bit of numbers and comings and goings of souls pointed out to me that in some regard, I knew exactly what my mother was doing two days before I was born, because somehow, it is always the same--the anticipation, the fullness--my doctor says all us mothers become like over ripe strawberries, weepy to the touch.   Who wouldn't be two nights before touching the mystery?

 And then we arrive, tiny and vulnerable, glittering in cosmic dust.  Our bodies will run and grow and stretch, trying to catch up to the vastness that we could be.  Until we learn the trick of being still.  And even then we will run and run some more, because we just can't believe it could be true, that we arrive complete, trailing a fan of magnificence that is our birthright.  Who would have imagined?