A pregnant parade

Yesterday, four of us, all verging on or past the 8 month mark of our pregnancies, went to sun and spa for the day in a Sonoma town fillled with t-shirts that say things like "Albert Wine-stein" and polo shirts bearing the mark of swank golf resorts and other valet-parking lands visited. Not where I would want to raise a child. Exactly where we would want to spend a day with nothing particularly pressing to do, no schedule to keep, little to suggest all the tasks of to-be-momhood waiting at home. And, even as I write this, I notice how middle class I feel, knowing that we have the means to have the concerns we do and to escape them, if briefly, just the same. This is one of the voices that is also me, one that cautions against liking all of this too much, warning me against getting too cozy with the desire to have a life, and not just a day, that looks like this. This is the same one that says it is possible to have a world that works for everyone, and not just those of us who can fill our gas tanks these days, a voice that suggests that while family is first, the family is far more than the usual unit of measure.

With the weather in San Francisco gray, spitting and barely making 55 degrees, our day trip couldn't have been better timed. Crossing the Golden Gate bridge, through the thickest of the fog, deep from the Bay, we eventually emerged into sunlight, all of our little limbs and spirits dancing in its warmth, and in realizing our good fortune.

From our four-belly line-up at the hotel pool to meandering through the town square, we became the bellies on parade, inviting the stories of the Mom who teared up when she shared how she just sent her youngest son off to college to the woman on reunion with her college roommates, all of whom became Moms upwards of twenty years ago. "Are you all a gang?," one store proprietor inquired slyly. "Yes, aren't you afraid?" we laughed. Some people were, I believe. For our act, choosing to bring a child into the world, is a hopeful one. It is also one that has women completely vulnerable to the world and able to destroy any obstacle in her path. We are four waddling women on a Saturday afternoon, holding in us all the power and mystery of giving life. This doesn't fit on the front or back of any t-shirt. We are an invitation for the richness of real stories, of people's deepest aspirations and their fears of their own capacities to bring forth and nurture life.