NaBloPoMo Prompt of the Day (Nov 18): What has been the happiest moment of your life thus far?
Hands down, the happiest moment of my life thus far has been during the birth of my first child, my daughter, Celie. It is one of those things, those moments that you remember vividly, but at the same time is so surreal that it almost seems as if you weren’t even there at all, but yet were simultaneously there completely with every fiber of your being as a great observer of something completely bigger and far greater than you…if that makes any sense.
A back part of my psyche was somehow a calm observer, a watcher. Although part of me was terrified about what birth would be like, I also went into my labor insanely calmer than I ever could have imagined I could be for not having any birthing classes. (My husband works away all week and it would have been difficult to have him attend classes with me, so it just never happened.) All I had in my repertoire were a few words from the chapters of Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth I had read, and a puzzling calm center I tried my best to hang onto…like riding a bronco, right? I figured this was something that my body knew how to do, and it essentially wasn't only “me” giving birth. All I had to do was hang on for the ride, right? All I had to do was endure. The whole act of birth itself was so amazing it requires a full blog onto itself, but after it was all said and done, I have felt no moment greater than the moment that my newborn daughter was laid onto my chest and looked into my eyes immediately after being delivered.
I was told by my sister who attended the birth (because after being in a complete state of awe and coming down from the most pain I ever felt in my life and being in a delicate position we'll say that didn't allow for the best view…I kinda wasn’t sure) that the baby didn’t open her eyes the entire time the doctor delivered her and sucked her out, cut the cord, etc. I was the first person that she saw when she opened her eyes. To me, that is one of the most beautiful things. She saved that for the moment she was laid on my chest; her virgin eyes opening to my face and finding Mother's eyes to mirror, so innocent, so young and yet so old at the same moment. I thought her eyes seemed to understand where we come from, and where we go to at the same time and were at complete peace with that.
Even after having carried her to term plus 4 days inside of me, she seemed so alien, so foreign, yet so organically mine, almost not even human but beyond human or more human…than human. Pure human. “Where have you been...?” That moment seemed slowed. I know it was only a couple of minutes that she laid on me before they took her for her checks and everything, but it seemed perhaps like a mini lifetime of getting to know each other, through touch and through sight. Finally. “Pleased to meet you.”
She didn’t cry the entire time; we both lay there enthralled with each other. She was wiser than me at that moment of her life by far---I looked into the grayed blue eyes of a sage at that moment, eyes that can not be seen in monks or gurus. A blank canvas. A fresh brick of clay. And she stared into my soul, seeming to recognize that part of her which dwelt in me, or that part of me which dwelt in her. These two parts of the same greater being met on my chest at that moment, eye to eye, for the first time. At least it did for me. And I like to think it did for her. My heart says so.
Me To You,
Missie Sue
[Wasn’t the first time you held your child the most amazing moment of your life?]
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