This weekend was full of celebration for Baby Boy H. It was great to gather with friends and family in Spartanburg on Saturday morning, but it was also surreal as I opened little footed-bear pajamas and overalls and baseball outfits.
It isn’t that I haven’t felt pregnant because I certainly have (just ask Sam…on second thought, don’t ask him), but because the people who were gathered around me had known me since middle school and high school and some of them had even signed the registry for coming to see me when I was born. It was surreal because I was surrounded by the circle of life.
As we drove back to Columbia, I reflected on the fact that there was really no question anymore whether I was pregnant or not. There were no quick glances over the shoulder, no more wondering eyes. And if the stomach wasn’t a big enough clue, there were the moments where I bumped into counters I had been around my whole life at my mom and dad’s house and that one incident in which I knocked my two-year old nephew down because I didn’t see his head, which lined up exactly to Baby H.
Certainly the growing belly and baby are asking me to exist in this world differently from what I drink and eat to how I fill the space around me to how I interact with friends and family and even strangers. It is all so new and different sometimes and other times it feels so natural and like this is exactly where I am supposed to be right now.
And I wonder if we find ourselves in predictable patterns in life because there really are predictable patterns or whether we create this seemingly predictable patterns ignoring the fact that the world around us is changing. We are getting older, the people we grew up with are getting older, the Supreme Court is passing a Marriage Equality Act, the South Carolina State House is taking down the confederate flag, people are hacking into cars as people are driving on the interstate…
We can get so caught up in trying to maintain balance and equilibrium that we ignore the rapid change that is all around us because we don’t want to be off balance. We want to stand strong and confident and sure of what we believe and how the world operates. We want to know what the future holds and be sure that the way we are spending our time is the right way to spend your time.
But we can’t know that.
Because even the earth itself is sitting at a 23.5% tilt, a little off balance.
And maybe when we can get to the point that we acknowledge that we are off balance and we don’t know what the road ahead holds, than we can really hold this moment as something unique and special, something that will never happen exactly the same again.
Maybe that’s when we can truly become whole beings living in this off balanced world.