Away I go

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, —
No higher than the soul is high.

       -from Renasence by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Cub has interlinked his arm with mine, his eyes glued to Toy Story and his other hand picking individual pieces of popcorn out of the bowl, popping them in his mouth. It's movie night and we've been having a somewhat serious discussion about whether or not Buzz Lightyear can really fly. I slowly begin to ease my arm out of his, intending to run upstairs to pour a glass of wine, and he clinches his arm tighter around mine.

"I'll be right back, bud. I just want to go get a drink."
"But you can't go because I love you.
"I love you too and I'll be right back."
"You'll be right back?"
"I'll be right back."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
"Ok. Hurry."

I slip out of the room and start up the stairs, making it only a few steps before my whole body is racked by sobs.

Edmonton isn't far and it's just too far. He's slept in my bed almost every single night since the day he was born and starting in January I'll be blowing him good night kisses over Facetime.

My heart is broken.

I'm going to Edmonton. I had an opportunity to stay, with the risk that I'd have to go to later, and after weighing out all the options I've decided to go. It was my choice. And I'm so fucking sad about it. My friend told me once that when we make a choice, no matter how right it is, we might also need to mourn the nonchoice, the thing that we didn't choose. So, this is mourning. I'm trying to enjoy him so much, noting all the little things that he does, the things I take for granted when I see him every day, but if I look too closely at him I burst into tears.

I know I can do it. That we can do it. If I doubted us, or this, I wouldn't go. Pursuing this dream is expensive, in so many ways, and I am operating on blind faith. Faith in myself, in my son, in his dad, in midwifery, and in good highway driving conditions.

The end of April cannot come soon enough.

Placement (with a capital p)

I came home early today to drink coffee and read poetry under the warm covers of my bed. I read Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver at least ten times until the loveliness could sink in. Once it did, I shared it with my friends and then I turned on The Walking Dead, which felt somewhat blasphemous but totally worth it.

Lately, there is much anxiety in the air over placement. It's a strange feeling, to have your fate rest so solidly in someone else's hands. Okay, so fate is a rather large word for a four-month, second-year midwifery placement. It's just toes in the water, getting our feet wet, watching and learning and hopefully inserting a speculum or two. If we're really lucky, a four-handed catch. I really have no idea, to be honest, so I'm just throwing a few things out there. There is a lot of talk about Placement and little hard data to go from. I guess that's the thing about being only the second year of a brand new midwifery program. We'll figure it out.

As for me, I've offered to go to Edmonton for this placement in a sort of "only if I have to" kind of spirit. As soon as I hit send on the email I was filled with this feeling.. regret, guilt, sadness. I'm not sure what it was, really. It would mean four months away from Cub. PB has, somewhat begrudgingly, said that he would keep him here for the duration of my placement, and we'd choreograph an elaborate dance to ensure that I could see him once in a while (or a little more often than that) and PB could hopefully get a few much needed, and much deserved, breaks. There is this sort of loose guideline that says if you go away for a placement then you can stay here for the rest of them, which is nice but not written in stone. Maybe you can stay for all three, maybe you'll have to go away twice. No one really knows. And so I told them that if I have to go, send me now, let me get it done for the shortest placement when it would cause the least disruption to all of our lives (in theory).

The guilt, though? Oh, it's heavy. Guilt because four months away from the little love of my life? I can't stand it. And here I am, offering this up to my program adviser instead of forcing her to pry it from my cold dead hands.

Either way, it will be hard. I know that. The thing I am focusing on is that no matter where I am, Cub will be well cared for by someone who loves him thiiiiiis much. And in case you didn't know this already, that's a heckuva lot of love.

World's Cutest "Firefighter Guy"

the intricate exacting particulars

In midwifery school we talk a lot about self care. We talk about the things we do to take care of ourselves, when our selves are always so busy caring for others. We talk about the importance of good nutrition, regular exercise, a good night's sleep. There's more to it than that though, there are things we do for our souls. Some people take long hot baths or dance in their kitchen to Abba. Some people make things, in kitchens and workshops. Some people sit down to play piano or climb to the tops of mountains, eyes and soul open in wonder.

I read poetry. I read it aloud to myself, or to Cub if he stops to listen. I sit in the bath with A Book of Luminous Things and turn over the words of "Wild Geese" for the thousandth time. That Mary Oliver knows how to write a poem. Reading poetry is the singular thing I do that brings me back to myself. Before you ask, no, I don't write poems. I don't write much. And novels are too daunting for the few precious spare minutes I find myself with. Short stories I can get behind, have you read Olive Kitteridge lately?

But poems have my heart. Lately I've been stuck on this one. I came across it by chance a couple of years ago, while I was pregnant with Cub, and it visits me all the time. It casually opens the door in that small part of my brain (or is it my heart?) where it lives to say hello, and stops me in my tracks every time.

In the spirit of self care, here it is.

The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument

The spirit is too blunt an instrument
to have made this baby.
Nothing so unskilful as human passions
could have managed the intricate
exacting particulars: the tiny
blind bones with their manipulating tendons,
the knee and the knucklebones, the resilient
fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae,
the chain of the difficult spine.

Observe the distinct eyelashes and sharp crescent
fingernails, the shell-like complexity
of the ear, with its firm involutions
concentric in miniature to minute
ossicles. Imagine the
infinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connections
of the lungs, the invisible neural filaments
through which the completed body
already answers to the brain.

Then name any passion or sentiment
possessed of the simplest accuracy.
No, no desire or affection could have done
with practice what habit
has done perfectly, indifferently,
through the body's ignorant precision.
It is left to the vagaries of the mind to invent
love and despair and anxiety
and their pain.

Anne Stevenson, from Poems 1955-2005