Full Circle

Last year at this time was a beautiful and hard season for me. We had been trying to get pregnant for awhile and the fertility of spring was so incredibly hopeful to me. I remember considering the blossoms and how their fleeting beauty offered the chance for reproduction for such a short time. In that amazement and prayerful surrender, my body was reset by the earth to offer an egg that at just the right moment and with just the right sperm created life. Reading my journal from last year has been neat. One entry was pondering all the petals in the streets that were washing down the gutters. I was writing how there are so many petals that don't go on to make another life, yet their "glory" of being a flower is not in vain. That there are many "eggs" that are not meant to make a life. Another entry was how when I returned from a jog and saw the pink dogwood in front of our house - my thought was how the tree was like pink balloons from the porch announcing "It's a girl." Little did I know that this January we would hang those balloons with such humbleness at our answered prayer.
This spring is even more amazing to realize all that one year can bring about. Next week is the date that we conceived last year. Then to carry the quiet hope of her life that became more and more sure and real until she was actually born. And still in the same year to experience her first three months of life, to have our hearts placed "outside of our bodies" in this cooing beautiful, innocent, tender life that we hold and are fully responsible for. A year ago we didn't even know of her existence, to begin smaller than the period on this page, and now she is the living and breathing proof of the divine.
My heart is one big song of praise. How in awe I am of nature! of timing, of all the life that is born and dies and all the fleeting beauty of flowers that never go on to make life.
Next week we are going to plant a tree in the garden to honor Nori's life and to thank God, to thank nature, that our bodies could be part of this wonderful, inexplicable cycle of reproduction. We are going to put her placenta (that is still in the freezer) under the tree, to give back to the earth. It reminds me that she is not ours, but God's and is a part of this incredible world.