Springing ahead

The light is returning. The sun is higher and stronger and sometimes blinding, even as it snows today. As we near Baker’s season, it is the light that strikes me.

I labored for three days at home beginning on April 1^st. On the first day, I baked chocolate chip cookies to bring to the hospital. I rechecked my list of things to pack. Chris painted the remaining pieces of trim from our kitchen remodel. On the second day, we walked to the library and I sat through a few contractions in the periodical section, vaguely considering what to do if my water broke on the upholstered chair. Chris painted a wooden bench for the front porch, I baked a chocolate birthday cake for our return home, and we figured out how to flip open and close the stroller. That evening, I called the birth center to tell them my contractions were coming 5 minutes apart. The midwife had me draw a bath and focus on feeling the baby’s movements. In the dim light, Chris helped me towel off and get to bed, where I dozed between contractions throughout the night. On the third day, I rested on the couch with the kitty and listened to yoga and birthing affirmation CDs as the frequency and intensity of contractions increased. I nibbled on grapes and toast and focused on my breathing. Eventually, no longer able to concentrate on anything other than getting through contractions, I handed my timer over to Chris and had him mark the start of each surge.

Time blurred during those three days. It is the light that I remember-the ebb and flow of light to dark and back to light. I called the birth center when the sun was at its highest point on April 3^rd. The midwife said to come in at 3:00. I called back at the appointed time because I couldn’t remember if she told me to come in or call again. During the quick drive to the birth center, I shut my eyes to the still-high sun, too focused to bother locating my sunglasses. The midwife deemed me 7 cm dilated and definitely in active labor. I could stay! She drew a warm bath, and I lolled about in the tub until darkness fell. Chris rocked in a chair next to me. Baker’s thumping heartbeat filled the room whenever one of the midwives checked on him. Chris opened the door to the outside to air out the steamy bedroom, and I was struck by the shadows of twilight. It was just the three of us, peaceful and calm and expectant.

It is nearly one year later and the light has returned. I both welcome and fear its return. With the light come the blooms of hyancinth and daffodil bulbs from Baker’s funeral arrangements that Chris dropped into the ground around our house. Snow crocuses, the first bloomer of spring, opened on the day we gathered with family to bury Baker’s ashes, a blindingly sunny day that didn’t match the occasion. I expect them to start poking through the ground any day now.

The entire month of April that followed his birth and death were bluebird-sky days that I think of as Baker wrapping his arms around his stricken parents. Once I was well enough to walk, we trudged around the neighborhood on daily one-foot-in-front-of-the-other walks, pulling each other along because there was nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. The time and space we had carved out for our boy left a gaping hole. So I stuffed my pockets with Kleenex and we walked and cried and squinted into the sun.

The calendar ticks by and will soon mark the end of the first of many years without our boy.

But we hope to see him in the light.