Though our bones, they may break, and our souls separate, why the long face?

Six moons passed, four remaining. I am twenty-four weeks pregnant, and I have trouble believing it hasn’t been years. My hips creak like an old house on a windy night. Veins have coiled up behind one of my knees. My belly swells, the button just a dimple now, and beneath it, ripples and thumps and stretches and rolls. Not even the third trimester yet? Really?

The new job has changed my days completely, and other work looks like it’s beginning to fall out of the sky, and so I’m trying to go with the flow of it, to make the best choices I can from day to day, to keep from planning that future when so much of it is still so unknown.Thomas’s naps spent glued to a screen, help from friends and family in watching him some mornings. It meant waking up in bed with my husband two days in a row last weekend and every weekend instead of creeping out before dawn. More money. Feeling like a cog in a web site wheel. But the last month’s inklings of depression and snapping moods have eased so much. Yoga helps. It always helps.

Meanwhile the leaves are gone and our living room smells of fir & woodsmoke and packages are winging their ways around the country. I’m more on top of purchased gifts this year than usual, but less prepared with those I’m making.
Meanwhile our extended families are having a rough time right now, faced with mortalities we’d rather not think about. Meanwhile the country is not showing its best side.
Meanwhile my son sings songs, tells stories, identifies birds and construction vehicles, grows taller, learns manners, helps sweep and make cookies and fold laundry.

It’s all happening at once. Always.