I gave birth nine times.
Who am I kidding? I did not give anything, not the way you hand your friend a ribboned package and smile because you know what's inside and she doesn't.
Labor took over my body, like screensharing with an eighteen wheeler barreling across the interstate. I was along for the ride, bearing down when the midwife told me to, and howling because the sensation of a seven or nine pound baby coming down the canal is not something you keep to yourself.
The remembrance comes back to me though, in a way that dispels my incredulity. It seems unlikely that I can weather the current... what shall I call it? Contraction? Our capacity to move in society has shrunk. Our sense of time plummets and elongates suddenly. Emotions surge and swell without restraint.
And yet.
I gave birth nine times. More accurately, birth carried me from one side of reality to another, bringing me to an expanded experience of love.
Maybe it is happening again. And Someone besides me knows what the gift is.
