Unreluctant Soul:: Forty Four

"Suppose you were shaped
like these or those!
or shaped like a BLOGG
Or a garden hose!
Of all the shapes
we might have been...
I say, Hooray
for the shapes we're in!
- Dr. Seuss (The Shape of Me and Other Stuff)

My mama belly is no longer perfectly flat, now there is a soft, small roundness where Satch once nestled...and a dent in my right pelvis where he made his entrance into the world by an unplanned incision. My boobs, like two migratory birds, have flown a little further south and will no longer roost upon their northern perch. The locale not the result of gravity, but from the ebb and flow of a tide of milk spanning over two years.

This is the shape of me and I wouldn't change a thing.

Forty four years have now passed. The passing of time (for me) is no longer journeyed by clock and rarely by calendar. When the battery in my watch died during my pregnancy, I never bothered to replace it. I have learned to navigate with a mixture of grace and stumbling by the rhythm of motherhood...by the flow of milk, by meltdowns, milestones and messes, by love and laundry, by tears and by laughter. It's a dance of equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion.

The sun raises and bows it's head boasting colors unimaginable. Seasons shift wearing their familiar scents. The hue and slant of the light is my new guide.

Yesterday we celebrated with pizza and cupcakes and kisses and song. As the sun was setting I pointed to the pink sky. Satch, in a breathy voice said, "Waaaaaaah!", and then asked. "Datchoo kiss it da pink sky"?

Beauty all around , tender and kissable.

Oh my heart!

(Thank you all for your wishes, your emails and comments. Even though I can't always respond to all of you, know that you make my heart dance. This post is dedicated to Nina, who inspired me to take a dip in a secret lake!)