The A/C remained broken. The windows were open. The unseasonably-warm pre-Thanksgiving night wrinsed clean but not so cool by 4am rain.
With each blink of my eyes, I begged the cold air back into the room. And my mind danced over the day’s scenes of waking and journaling and meeting and planning and laughing. And another story about kids who may or may not need parents. We hear these stories often, someone telling us about some kid somewhere or something. Often hypothetical. And often just out of reach.
Like her second-hand mention of those “little blonde girls” that might need a home someday.
I stood in the sun and said without thought: “Well, we’ll take ‘em!”
As always, I dismissed any potential for potential. It’s easier that way. It’s always that way. I placed that mention on the shelf with the others that have come to nothing. My friend and I returned to the casual work of our hands and casual talk about life. Casual. And so the conversation moved on.
But at 4am my mind returned to that warm mid-afternoon moment and then reached back four years to the Wednesday we found out we were pregnant.
Remembering how I shook with fear.
And the Thursday after.
Remembering how I shook with love.
Never have I felt so convinced of anything in my life: I was maternal to the marrow in my bones. That little life inside me birthed a fierce and fiery mama-love in my heart.
It was overtaking.
And I wondered if that maternal instinct will rebirth in me over babies born by another woman… Will I have that same burning “If you hurt them I will kill you” feeling like I had in those days of pregnancy? Will I be so certain to give my life for the sake of theirs? Is that same warm love still down in my marrow, waiting for a reason to be pulsed through every inch of my body?
I tell myself it will, I will, I will, it is. I tell myself that at the handing over of those little lives into the blankets of our hands, I will be so taken with love that I won’t be able to stand myself.
I tell myself that they will be mine and I will be theirs and I will love them with an unquenchable love. I tell myself. And I listen to the rain some more. And I push the covers aside and push away the truth that I won’t really know until that day comes.
