Birthwatch

             Our eighth grandchild was born on June 4th. Welcome, sweet Peter!
            For a long time now I have observed that birth and death, though they seem like opposites, have surprising similarities:

• They are both periods of dramatic transition, crossing the boundaries between life (what we know) and not life (what we don’t know).
• Emotions run high.
• In the midst of the process, people experience a suspension of time, as though lifted out of everyday life.
• You hover in some kind of cosmic rest area, out of the line of traffic, while the rest of the world loses its importance.
• After the event has come to pass, people feel compelled to share their stories, a trancelike glow of wonder on their faces.

            Over the last week, as we waited for Peter to be born, another similarity rose to mind – grappling with powerlessness and uncertainty.
           I’ve been a hospice volunteer for four years now, and I have sat vigil over dying family members. One of the hardest parts of the process is its unknown timeline. Might she die tonight? Should I cancel my travel plans for next week? How long will this take? Will we be here forever? You are perpetually braced for impact, with no clear endpoint.
            Last Friday, moments after Jonathan and I arrived home from an 8-day trip at 6:30 in the evening, we got a call from our daughter, whose home we’d just left 2 hours earlier:
“I think I’m in labor. I’m sorry - this timing is terrible!” Her doctors told her she might be in the hospital that night, or at least over the weekend.
            I fetched Daisy from the kennel, got back in the car, and headed two hours back down the highway to stay in my daughter’s house. T and C put their son to bed at his cousins’ house, and I arrived at their home by nine o’clock. Then - contractions slowed to a halt. Hospital trip was called off. Mom- and Dad-to-be were back home.
            For the next four and half days, we wondered every night if baby would arrive overnight, so I stayed, just in case. My pregnant daughter and her husband woke up every morning to another unplanned extra day at home. What to do…? Fill the time with chores, activities, walking, curb-walking, rest. But we were poised on the brink of something that kept not happening. Induction appointments were bumped down the road every morning – call at 4:00, call at 6:00, call tomorrow morning – until it seemed the baby would never be born.
            During those suspended days, I realized why the experience felt familiar. Something big was going to happen. We wanted to be ready to face this big thing. Stomach flutters of worry made sleep a challenge – what might happen? What might go wrong? Will I be ready? Will I handle what I need to handle okay? Will it be today?
           All these things I had felt while watching over my Mom, then my Dad during their last days (weeks!) of life. They are full-feeling times, replete with bursting anticipation. Quotidian preoccupations slip away, but they also tug at you. Life continues on the sidelines. There’s weeping, hand-wringing, laughter, resignation, peace, frustration, and acceptance – all control out of our hands. Maybe these bookends of life - birth and death - are a reminder that control is always an illusion. We just have to go along for the ride. But beautiful things happen all along the way, at both ends and in the middle.
            You surely guessed this story has a happy ending. Baby Peter came on his own schedule at last, swiftly and with little fuss. His blinking gaze holds me with a curious, clear-eyed purity. Everything he absorbs into his sensory bank is a dazzling discovery, and he is a little miracle, a new chapter’s beginning, a previous chapter’s ending (where did that little soul come from?). And my heart is filled with wonder, wherever this is, somewhere along life’s extraordinary orbit.