Remember me?
It’s been a while since I’ve written here. Way too long. I’ve missed it and meant to get back online many times in the intervening months. Now it’s hard to even know where to start. So much in my life has changed, and so much is about to change.
Over the last 10 months, I’ve gotten married, changed my last name and all my credit cards*, picked up substantial new job responsibilities at work, mourned the loss of my grandfather, took a two week trip through southern Spain, watched and encouraged Cesar as he took an exciting new job (with a much shorter commute!), sold my rental house in Dallas, and found out that we’re expecting a baby boy in early October!
At times, it has felt like things are changing at breakneck speed, bordering on out of control, but usually it feels like things are happening exactly as they should. Even if that’s means quickly.
Last year as things in my life began to take off, I came across this quote, and I keep coming back to it.
“Too often, racing through life, … [w]e become an unexamined maw into which our encounters and experiences rush unassimilated, leaving us both full and unsatisfied because nothing has been digested and taken in.”
“In order to ‘integrate’ our experiences, we must take them into account against the broader canvas of our life. We must slow down and recognize when currents of change, like movements in a symphony, are moving through us.”
– Julia Cameron, Right to Write
It’s impossible not to recognize the “currents of change” in my life. These are the changes I’ve worked and waited a lifetime to experience. The last thing I want is to race through them without relishing every last moment, but I question how best to “take them into account against the broader canvas” of my life.
How does one actually do that? Is it a mental stroll down memory lane? A physical revisiting of places past? A written version? Or is it enough to simply slow way down and fully inhabit moments here and now, with an eye to the past?
I’ve tried each of them in hopes of fully digesting these moments and preparing myself for what’s ahead. Even when I’ve been absent online, I’ve never strayed far from the private pages of my unassuming notebook. For me, putting pen to paper has been the best way to integrate this experience. It always helps me locate the necessary words to round out my thoughts, even as I struggle to put into words something as miraculous yet commonplace as pregnancy.
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We were lucky to get pregnant easily and to have had a pretty uneventful pregnancy, at least so far. Many wonderful people struggle with both. Those struggles and our good luck haven’t been far from my mind. I’ve been humbled and awed by the sheer physicality of pregnancy and the magnitude of moments along the way — seeing his tiny body on our 20 week ultrasound, feeling him move from the inside for the first time, and getting used to his rhythms and patterns now in the third trimester. The experience of creating a life has been nothing short of staggering!
*My passport name change still needs to be done (got to get on that!). I’m also so excited to get baby boy his own passport shortly after his arrival. Family travel ahead!
