Cusp

I wake in the still, warm night to an odd feeling , a soft, repetitive jolt. Gradually, sleep clears and I realize it's inside of me. The baby has the hiccups.

Everything about this spring feels like an edge. Ess and Gee, grown so tall and solid and confident, are on the verge of being children. I can barely see the toddlers of last fall, the babies in diapers that I changed and guided and nurtured. It's as if they wrapped themselves in a cocoon while I wasn't watching and now they are bursting out, so colorful and adept and different that I am left searching the ground for my snuggly, furry caterpillars.

The unborn baby is on the verge too, testing tiny swallowing reflexes, practicing breath, readying for the transition from water to air.

At my feet, I sense my own edge, a crumbling cliff side towards which I move ever closer with reluctant, shuffling steps.

For a moment, I rest. I sit down here, in the sun, in the midst of early summer's flowers and let the warmth of now soak my face and bones and round belly. That edge is coming, but not yet, I have now. In the fall, I'll be a preschool mom with a newborn. Such a different thing from a first time mom with a tiny child. The baby is a fact, not a center, a satellite, not the sun. People won't pause to tell me how darling he or she is, they'll smile and say "my you're busy." This little one will grow to a year, babble and coo, smile, roll over, crawl, and stand without the white hot spotlight of a new family, in the quiet shade of our little forest.

We walk on, the "big kids" running and rolling and jumping, beyond my ability to protect from falls and scrapes and bumps. I only patch and kiss. Cue struggles desperately to keep up, reaching for my hand to help him, still unsteady on the slopes. In the distance, the drop off looms. The view is gorgeous from here on this little peak, back over my new motherhood, my time with all toddlers, my time as a pregnant woman, forward to unknown valleys, distance mountains, hidden vistas.

Surveying the landscape from a distance, I am aware that this cliff I dread might not be such a huge obstacle after all, just a little change in terrain, a slight scar in the landscape. It might require nothing more than for Matt to take my hand and help me down, lift the front of the stroller. The path continues on, even in spots, climbing, cresting other peaks. From college graduation, I'll wager that the end of pregnancy and new motherhood looks like a two-foot drop.

Lilacs are in the air. My babies run. The stroller is heavy, even empty. My uterus tightens in regular intervals. I don't register each contraction, only an oddness, a discomfort. With focus, I find the muscle taunt and hard, the baby within frozen in anticipation, preparing, practicing. In the same way that Ess and Gee throw tantrums, yell and stomp, punish and forgive, flash anger, forging new brain pathways for the future, practicing for challenges that I can't see, preparing for escapades to which I will receive no invitation.

I'll just hand them a handkerchief, like maidens of old, and whisper, remember me, return some day.

In the night, I wrap my arms around my belly to better feel the soft movements.

Stay, I wish, stay with me like this.

But, that's not really my heart's desire. I mean only this night, this time, let me feel you and hold you so that I can have this to remember. My true prayer is the same as every mother's prayer, shouted to the stars, whispered to the hummingbirds, the prayer that reverberates through bodies and hearts and minds when we press our soles to the ground and turn our faces to the sun - change, evolve, grow, develop.

It's the prayer of the universe, in my mind, the thing that runs through that force that some call Buddha and some call Allah and some call God. The united yearning of trillions of mothers and trillions of fathers bound together into a universal power - a life force - roll, crawl, walk, run, leap, dance, swim.

Fly.

Before you know it, before I know it, before any of us knows it, the prayer is answered and we are left behind.

As it should be.