It can't always be said in prose...

I've been feeling and thinking and processing a lot of things as I think about having another child next year or so (no we're not actively trying... but we'd like to fairly soon... maybe.)

There are things that are so hard to express just by writing through them... Sometimes giving them a meter, a pulse, helps me say things I couldn't otherwise.

And so, I subject you to my poetry again. Apologies in advance.

Instrument

Male and Female He Created them; she birthed her children in sorrow.
In these words there is a song, it is the song of many ages,
It is the song of many women, it is the song of much travail,
And of the knowing that even in joy there is fear and sorrow.

When my first child grew in my womb I learned the song,
I almost lost the girl so small, I learned that she would fight for life,
And as I kept her safe inside, such joy,
And as she left, such awe and fear- that she could not be kept safe from everything anymore...

There were some almost-theres, faint flickers of hope,
Hope of a child that never was.
They are part of the song, my body singing the wrong notes,
They weren't quite mine, not quite in key.

There was another babe, she did not eat
She could not coordinate her mouth
To suck with joy the milk that sang from my breasts
And so her screaming joined the song.

She grew and learned to sing more sweetly with me. Another came,
She was not with me, and the song became desperate,
Where is my child? My body screamed,
But she was back with me soon, and I was scarred but whole.

I learned to sing again but just in time
For the sweetest melody I'd known to stop-
Stop!
Breaking my heart as my body was broken,
Breaking my soul almost as I clung to the melody
The eternal litany
The sorrow and the joy entwined
Every mother of every child
Every father of every child
Every mother who never had a child
They all sang too...

And I was upside down and heard her song
And knew it was not lost.

And so I found the strength to sing again
This song so bright and fervent gave me hope
And though I felt I failed her as again I broke
She was so strong she sang despite it all.

And so I choose to sing again the song
This time in a much richer voice
Knowing that the dark and minor notes
Work only toward the whole though the discord
And atonal shriek may mar the song again
Still will I sing...

Some say that I should stop, some say my body can't
I say that through the ages women have in joy and sorrow sung
And I will sing until my song's complete.
And I will do it in this body,
This, twice-broken, much battered, too-big,
Twice-healed
Just-right
Instrument
My voice shines through it,
And so because it is the instrument of my song
It is beautiful.

And once again it will let me sing
And even should it break again
And even if it cracks
in half
Even then
I will have my song.

And it is the song of ages.
It stretches forward to my children
And back and back and back
And it is the song of Ruth, and Rebekah, and Sarah, and Eve.
And it is still the song that is most beautiful of all to me
And full of joy
Even when it's full of sorrow.
And
It is mine.

The "Miller Mark"

I learned an interesting little piece of family history this week.

Katie Sue has a strawberry birthmark "stork bite" on the back of her head/neck. I have a few cafe au lait marks and several of my kids have them too, including one on the upper right quadrant of the back that my half-sister, my mom, my brother and I all have, but I think this is the first of our kids to have a strawberry birthmark, and definitely the first to have one on the back of the neck/lower head.

We were over at my mom's Monday (while Jeff got tax deadline work done) and my mom said, "Oh, she has a Miller Mark!" I said, "Yeah, she has a little birthmark; what's a Miller Mark?"

My mom explained that so many of the Millers (my maternal grandma's maiden name) had these strawberry birthmarks on the back of the head/neck that my great-grandpa always referred to them as "Miller Marks" and would remark on it when a baby in the family was born with one.

So there you go- she may not have the birthmark that many of the rest of us in my generation and my kids' generation share, but she has a Miller Mark. The funniest part is that this first child to have a Miller Mark is the one who is named after that particular great-grandma- the grandma who was a Miller is my grandma Katie! (Katie Sue- Katherine Susanna- is named after both my grandmas, who are Catherine Veronica and Mary Katherine, but the nickname Katie is after my Grandma Katie- both my grandmas go by nicknames of their middle names.)