With 13 minutes of pushing she was here. 8 pounds 7 ounces of wrinkly baby meat. Cry like no other creature, tiny lungs working through new air. Somebody heard it from the outside, our tiny cabin lit up with candles and practically buzzing with the noise of her coming. My contractions started out quiet, with breathing and clinging to pillows, furniture, the hands of my sister, my neighbor, my partner. Lying down to rest, getting up to shower. Telling Jill when they start and stop so she could tell the midwives. Kissing Kenneth in the shower for the last time as two plus a hidden one. Then gradually they took me, the contractions, and I knew from the Ina May books to vocalize the feelings. It sounded just like sex, but for hours. It felt like minutes. Midwives sat chatting on the couch, comfortable to let me labor. I thought they'd boss me around but it was me who bossed that night. "Rub my feet! Then it became just "FEET!" as the contractions ripped me from this world into a complete and brief all over pain. Yelling now for a minute long then settling down to rest. Saw Jill and Amy and Stephanie the midwife carrying pans and pots of boiling hot water to fill the tub since our tank was tapped. Don't know how long it took but I was so grateful to get in. Kenneth sat on the birth ball which I hadn't needed while I squirmed around in the birth tub. I rubbed his leg when the pains came and it helped for some reason. Feeling any other flesh but my own for just a moment.

Then I had to poop. I told the midwives that I had to poop and could I just do it in the tub, and Pamela said that's fine but it's probably your baby coming. I said "oh no...pooping would be easier," so she came and sat on the bed facing me to square off about it. She said, "you've just finished stage one which is the stage of labor when you need to get out of the way and just let your body do the work. Now you are in active labor which means you are actively involved. You just get in there and push" and she told me to send the energy which was flying out of my yelling mouth down. I closed my mouth and made the noise go down into and out of me. I pushed hard and suddenly Kenneth who was now behind me in the tub could see the head. He saw her face. Pamela told me to slow down and push the head out so I did. Then she said to wait while she checked to see if the umbilical cord was around her neck. The coast was clear so she said push the shoulders out slowly and I screamed "OH GOD SHE HAS SHOULDERS!" but I was just kidding because I am grateful for those shoulders. The jokes I make, kiddo knows I don't mean it. She knows I love her and I am grateful to have her here on earth with me and Kenneth. Kenneth held her first and then put her on my chest where she wriggled around until I started talking to her and then she was still. Midwives got her to cry and like I said it was a sound like no other creature. Tiny and sweet.

from soda pop and popcorn trees

She came to us in the springtime, after we'd drunk deep of the season's intoxicated blessings. In music class, pieces like Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a (naughty little) Faun and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring wove their peculiar spells over me until I was as susceptible to the will of the world as he was to the coyly bent sprigs of cherry blossoms which surrounded our rooms.

Love drunk, we laughed all day and deep into the chirping night. Our passions floated out the open window in a testament to the reckless beauty of spring. Green love hung my apartment all around with blossoms that he'd spotted with a careful eye and brought to me. A painted butterfly landed under my door one day, and I was suddenly captured.

Then there was one singular moment, in the golden light of some morning or afternoon, when a thought flitted through and said there was nothing to worry about. This is right and good, the thought said, one minute before we shook our green soda bottles and let the caps fly. All in good fun, what we did that day. Somehow I knew. Somehow he knew. Somehow despite everything in us that was too young, too poor, too reckless, we both knew she had come, and we wanted her there. Our microscopic love child, blessing from the spring, flew into the room and curled up between us.

"Okay," he said, petting her long cinnamon hair.
"Okay," I said, when her turtle green eyes turned to shine into me.

We are glad you are here.