yesterday was my daughter mindemoya’s due day, and it’s been three weeks since she’s been having on-and-off contractions.
baby, come out! we all want to meet you!
in the meantime, mindemoya’s getting bigger and bigger. how is this possible?!? she’s attached to this massive belly and all she can do is waddle. she moves from chair to chair – every single one is uncomfortable, and the sofa is so deep, she needs someone to help her out of it. one minute she wants nothing but ice water, next minute she craves a tuna melt subway so bad, you can almost see a cartoon cloud of it hanging over her head.
“that’s one of the things that make a mother,” muses the great-grandmother-to-be, as the three of us go for a slow walk around memorial park, “this in-the-bones ability to wait things out, not because we particularly want to but because we know that we simply have no other choice.”
four generations of us, waiting – one moment patiently, one moment impatiently – to transform: from fetus to newborn, from daughter to mother, from mother to grandmother, from grandmother to great-grandmother.