Now

Yesterday.  The winds!  Oy.  In nearby towns, utility poles broke off.  A car was totaled by a falling tree.  Here, we drove east on Colfax at 40 mph, dodging downed branches.  We engaged in a race with pieces of white paper and plastic cup lids that were bouncing along the pavement.  First place was awarded to the trash. 

I read last night that the winds were bringing in a winter storm that would drop about an inch of snow this morning.  Wow!  That's a lot of work for very little reward!

But instead, the gales delivered a baby worthy of such intense labor.  I awoke to eight inches of wet, clingy, white stuff covering any surface that would allow it.

I am thinking about how "labor" is not one solid experience.  It is made up of waves.  The winds were not steady for all those hours, and they didn't always travel in the exact same patterns.  And labor leading to childbirth is rich and varied.  We label it discomfort - and there's a reason for that - but it is also made up of joy, love, heavy breathing, and a primal urge to push;  it is enough to blow us wide open.  Meanwhile, underneath and within the winds and the contractions of childbirth, there is an everlasting alrightness.    It was here before and is still here when the winds stop and snow is falling.  It is here before the mother conceives, and when her baby is breathing its first breath (and even when the baby has become a teen!)  This peaceful alrightness is always here. 

This labor that Michael and I find ourselves in now - the labor we share with all of humanity in some form or another;  it isn't one solid thing, either.  Contractions of fear and confusion, along with waves of relief and an ever-deepening love, come and go in a sea of everything-is-so-fine-right-now-ness.    That sea has always been here and it will still be here when no one remembers we even existed as two people in love finding our way through MCL.