Out of Body

(Pre-Script: To experience the miracles contained herein, you must first go down to the playlist, click on the song, "Suddenly I See," #36 on the playlist, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

I have not had an out of body experience in this lifetime, but I almost did. I mean, I think I almost did. It was right at the end of an elephantine pregnancy; elephantine in How I Perceived It's Length, and in How I Was Perceived By The Outside World.

Blink.

Blink.

So there I was, my body laboring to rid itself of the the large child it had been harboring all of these months, with some crazy midwife saying meaningless words to my face, words like, "You're fine." as I said words that made actual sense, like "I'm going to die!" What happened was something between what the midwife said and what I said. I have always thought that there is only room in a body for one person to live. Since there was a baby inhabiting mine, I figured I'd lead the way out. It was like I was there, but I was not all there. I was on the bed and somewhere up there on that wall over there, too. People were talking at me, but it was as though they were speaking through a fog next to which I hovered. I think it was my first act of leading by example in my mothering of this newest baby of mine, because shortly after this, she too came out of my body. She just needed to follow me.

Once she was out, I reentered my body and declared it a war torn zone which would need to be rebuilt over the course of time. It would always bear remembrances of those who had gone before, and come forth out of it. They always leave something of themselves behind, like when people carve their initials into the bark of a tree, only not so aesthetically pleasing. But that body over there of that little one who was now being measured and weighed, it was perfect, a miraculous construction,and one needs to take the importance of birthing a miracle into serious consideration. It is no small thing.
In this particular case, it was an 8 lb thing.
Once she was out, I crawled shakily back inside, built a fire, and hovered there.

Or, as David James Duncan puts it in the book "The River Why,"

"When I finally crept down it was dark...inside, I built a fire and huddled near the flames."
His book is, on the surface, about fishing, and my story is, on the surface, about birthing. Although now that I mention it, those two things are not entirely or even almost unrelated.

-XOXO,