Three Dozen

I’ll distill my birthday post down to its finest essence, and remind myself of the one thing I know is true:  This time next year, when I turn 37, all of my energy and resources are going to be focused on having a baby, whatever that takes and wherever it takes me.  There is a ton of ground to cover between now and then, and a million things I need to do to make myself physically, mentally, and financially strong enough to take on the task, but I’m going to do them all.  I have to.

People who know one incontrovertible thing about themselves–that they are born to sing, or to write, or to paint, or to travel–are lucky.  Life has handed them a lens through which they can filter all decisions: does this lover, this degree, this job, this house, take me closer to the one thing in life that I know I must do?  If so, I’ll pursue it.  If not, I won’t.  I’m lucky too, because while I don’t think I’ve discovered all of the truths about myself yet, there is one thing that is and always has been true:  I was born to be someone’s mother.  And so I will be.

I heard something a few weeks ago that has been reverberating inside my skull ever since.  It’s so simple, but so revolutionary.  I jot it in the margins of my class notes, and lie awake at night contemplating writing a poem to frame the stark lovely truth of it.  If I could cross-stitch, I’d do it up in vibrant purple and hang it by my front door.  It’s my gift to myself in my 36th year, and I’ll share it with you.

You are allowed to want what you want.

I am allowed to want what I want.

Trust me, it gets bigger the more you consider it.

(It reminded me a little bit of this poem, which I adore.  Poems like this remind me of why I don’t write poetry; thank goodness, people better suited to it than I am already do.)

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.