long floor-length formal collection in black

I title this one: No One Told Me Life Was Going To Be This Way. Mostly cause we watch too much Friends and it's stuck in my head.

We're on our way!!! Pray pray pray.

"Well, here goes nothing. As I strip my shoes and sweater and soul before security checks.

I see my insides on the screen and wouldn't you know it- they flag my chest. Heart pounding. All this flesh carries with it wild dreams. Too big for carry-on luggage but it's coming whether I check it or not.

Mammas walk through with healthy-lunged babes, screaming the whole way. The pregnant ones walk through a different machine. But they don't send me; this pregnancy unseen.

Three months. Three months pregnant. And three years planned. I can see it. Little cells carrying unique and impossible life, divide and multiply and the hope they spread is exponential. Every little cell incubating its own unknown life. Within each cell a part, and within each cell the whole. I can see it. Like each cell's hope is it's own little dream- a dream of a moment yet lived. And what if- what if each little atom connects with a moment of life.

That moment unknown until just that time.

And then.

Life! The cell explodes to release the hope it's been holding and growing since conception, and this connection, of its unique moment of life with this exact moment of time, is fully realized. What if- what if the cell in the tip of my finger holds the dream of the moment my hand holds theirs, and what if- their little cells were made holding that exact moment, waiting for it, to release life. Life lived as fully as it is imagined.

I know it sounds like foolishness. A rambling mother with too many hormones to think straight. Heavy, with expectation and life and fear.

Three months. Cells dividing and multiplying and there's a life there already inside me- a life of Mommy. Three months. A whole different kind of pregnant. But trust me there's been morning sickness. And mood swings. False labor pains and the desperate longing to know and hold and tuck ten fingers and toes into beds, kissing foreheads goodnight.

I have counted no fingers, but the tension lingers, countless papers and typos and governments. I saw a death certificate before a birth certificate. There are mixed emotions when life comes into your hands through death. When motherhood comes into your life through orphans. There is an odd sort of wonder. I stare at them like new parents studying the curves of their nose, and counting toes. I stare and know that in their eyes they show, not traces of Michael and me, but of death and loss and preventable poverty. long floor-length formal collection in black

But now not my babies but the guards are fussing at me... I need to fasten my shoes and grab my things. The first of 100 security checks are done. They found none of my insecurity and fear. They know nothing of the life busting out of cells made for this moment.

Well, here goes all of me. Here comes everything.
Michael and I smile and board the plane."