July 7, 2024

“I love how Summer

just wraps its arms around

you like a warm blanket.”

– Kellie Elmore

I opened Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper this morning and read her essay

about sitting on a bench in front of the Maria Shriver Birthing Center.

While waiting for her daughter, she wrote about a dream

she'd had about

‘birthing’

a new version of herself.

And suddenly, she heard Help!

and in moments she was assisting

in an emergency birth 

right then and there…

My thoughts went to my son, Ben and his new wife, Ally

and their amazing wedding two weeks ago,

I remembered especially the Mother Son Dance.

The memory of dancing with my son 

has stayed with me,

a comforting, lovely thought,

a moment in time when all was well in the world.

Sharing words, smiles, laughs.

But most of all,

feeling so much pride in the young man he has become.

And I flashed back to an earlier time

when I was biking cross-country

with the American Lung Association

the Summer of '88.

At the end of one day

we were talking about the level of pain we'd endured

after biking four back-to-back 100-mile days.

And I said,

“I bet childbirth is like this.”

After a shower and cleaning up,

there was no pain.

All that remained

were the incredible memories of landscapes and panoramic views,

farmland, rest breaks in fields of tall grass,

beneath a huge shade tree,

the image of an old man wearing a weather-beaten floppy hat,

his arm rested on the rolled-down window

of his sun-bleached pickup truck,

his eyes sparkling, 

his huge smile with a missing tooth.

And after three child births, I can say that it is true.

Pain vanishes,

leaving in its place

a beautiful human

and the miracle of birth.