I read through your comments and what resonates most is this: wait to have a second child until nothing else seems right. There are so many different ways to look at the same picture, tilting and turning the image until it fits what we imagine for ourselves. It’s the imagining that matters. The taking of steps. The risk in doing so. We can never really know where our life will take us. The outcome is more illusive than four leaf clovers tucked among the grass. We cannot be sure we’ll be at the right spot to pluck them up and pocket them—cannot for that matter be sure that we won’t gather an armful of lilies instead. It’s the attempt that matters.The effort that goes into charting the course and then leaping into bright blue space.
Right now this feels right: my small family of the three of us, tucked away here on a hilltop at the end of a long valley. We’re just getting the hang of us. Here. Last year was like a bruise, with so much energy scattered helter-skelter that we’re still just hoping to make it through the winter, gathered around our wood stove, drinking coffee over breakfast.
I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of failing or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.
Dawna Markova