A million tiny sparkles of light
by Cheryl, posted on March 1st, 2011 in Remembe(red)
There is a pool in the middle of the room.
The queen-size bed has been shoved against the wall with the windows that stretch its length. The pool is the large inflatable kind, with cheerful, Crayola-colored fish printed on it. It is now full of warm water, delivered via the hose attached to the shower faucet in our bathroom, and takes up almost all available floorspace.
The lamp is dim, but the lamp is always dim. For some reason, a house built in 1992 did not come with overhead lighting and the bedside lamp, with its pineapple stone base, provides just the right glow for late-night nursing or visits from sick children.
My doula speaks softly, encouragingly, and rubs my back. My midwife sets up, rustlings of paper and plastic. The shutter of my neighbor’s camera clicks as she documents the scene.
The room is quiet.
Inside me, there is noise.
There is searing pain as a vise tightens around my very core. My muscles and bones scream as they push and open in an ancient ballet. I float on my stomach and try to still my thoughts, to find the rhythm I’ve danced twice before.
My husband lies half-asleep on the carpet, just out of reach of the pool and the clear shower curtain underneath it that catches any water that escapes. He has the flu. He barely made it upstairs.
He is here, but he is not here.
I am not alone, but I am alone.
There are those around me, but they are merely accessories, like a purse or a pair of diamond studs.
This is a solitary journey. Like death.
But today, just before dawn, it is not about the end.
It is about the beginning and miracles.
I lift my sweet baby from the water and hold him to my chest as he takes his first breath.
Where there were five people in the room a moment ago, now there are six.
Xander.
He didn’t exist, and then he did, by simple virtue of oxygen filling his lungs. And his birth released a spirit into the room, like a million tiny sparkles of light.
A lot has happened in this room. A lot still does. It’s where the kids come at night when they’re scared or sick or just need a hug, the first place they go in the morning. There are mountains of laundry that are sorted and put away. There are arguments and sex and tears and dreams. There are diaper changes and wrestling squirming, squealing toddlers into clothes. There is perching on the bed and watching the fat orange moon rise from behind Saddleback Mountain or wild flashes of lightning during a rare storm. There is the late-night Jon Stewart and early-morning Spongebob.
It is the mundane, the everyday. It is also life.
That day almost exactly two years ago, for a moment, this room was even more.
I like to think of it still as a hallowed space, as precious as a first breath.
A million tiny sparkles of light.
This post was inspired by the memoir prompt “Take us to a room” by The Red Dress Club.
Tags: home birth, memoir, Remembe(red), the red dress club, water birth, X
cristina Says:
Elissa Says:
Cheryl Reply:
March 2nd, 2011 at 12:21 am
Thank you so much, Varda. Your kind words mean a lot.
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