the potential

Spring teaches us lessons. Lessons in watchfulness. Lessons in living now. Lessons in the fast fading of beautiful moments. Lessons in rebirth. Lessons in possibility. Lessons in the powerful potential for new life.

The potential.

It is hard for me to write about this. It is harder for me to think on it. I am trying to stay in the moment. I am striving for hope where I was not hopeful.

On Thursday, K felt a gush between her legs while she was at work. It was blood. It happened around 3:30.

I had been in Lansing all morning for a House hearing with AFSC's new staff (it was his very first day of work). The hearing had gone well. The day was hot, too hot for the season in Michigan. P, the new staff, and I drove back. I got home around 2:30ish. Grabbed food, grabbed my bicycle and put it on the car and drove down to the park and rode into work. I planned to park the car at the park so k and I could ride back to it around 9:00pm from a panel I was supposed to speak on in Ann Arbor.

I was sweaty when I got to work. Dripping cause it was 82 degrees on april 15 in Michigan. I planned to train P for about an hour and a half and then go to the event I was going to be speaking at when the phone rang and K said I'm having a miscarriage.

And then my heart sank. But it did not sink too much cause I had built foam and other soft substances around it. I know that a large percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage. I know that this struggle we have been going through is bigger than I am able to wrap my head around and I know it is a struggle. I do not take it as anything else.

Kk had called the repro clinic and they scheduled an ultra sound pronto for 9:00 am friday.

Back at my office where I had been standing dripping with sweat with a partially sinking heart, P instantly dropped everything and took me in his car over to K at her work. Where her boss and colleague had been there for her, supporting her, loving her amidst her tears.

We scooped K up and P took us to our car down in the park.

I drove quickly to the post office to purchase stamps I needed for work the next day, and then I took K home. Our dear friend R brought K a chocolate chip blizzard and some maxi pads. And then, our dear friend and no longer roommate but now neighbor, A, came to walk the pook with me. Later that night she also brought us yummy dahl for dinner.

We walked through an alley I had never discovered before in Ypsi. It is old and dirt and gravel and it feels right beneath human feet. It feels as though it has been tread on for 150 years. We stopped at P's to hand off the stamps I had purchased for the mailing that I would or would not be at work for the next day depending on what happened with K's ultra sound.

I stayed at P's place and A walked pook back home. I drank a cold beer with him in his new apartment, talked, and listened to dylan. He had moved in the day before. We found it together on Monday after a day of apartment hunting. It is a great pad. A good sized efficiency in a very old house with ultra high ceilings and access to two great porches.

It was calming to be sitting there and tuning out a little. But then I knew I had to get back to KK.

I walked home with a small buzz that comes from drinking a cold beer in hot weather as though it were a glass of water. I kicked dirt in the alley. I took in the magnificent green that beats through even the milkiest dusk. Because the green that accompanies the rousing of sleeping vegetation in spring, is different--more vivid, more elaborate than any other green. It glows with the pulse of life. it busts open with that which wants nothing more than to be alive.

When I got back to our house, our good friend G was there with K. She just happened to be in from florida to be with her ailing papa in windsor and was able to slip over the border to visit us and some other ypsi friends. It was perfect timing. Then our good friend N came over and we sat around catching up and three of us drank beers.

They left.

We went to bed.

In the morning, we drank coffee and drove on over to the repro clinic.

Some mother of some straight girl waiting in the waiting room gave us not too kind looks too many times as we sat there. So, I held K's hand tighter as we waited. I held her hand and rubbed her neck and displayed vigorous affection.

We waited and waited.

Then we were taken back to an exam room.

The boy doctor finally came in. Remember, my hope was not high. It was cushioned safely in the cottony confines of my chest.

He wanded K and then instantly said there it is with a strong beating heart. And, then my sweaty hand squeezed K's hand so tight and ghostly little fingers with a mind of their own seemed to rip out the foam and cotton and soft stuff that had been surrounding my own heart, and it became all bare and vulnerable and open.

That is what hope is like. It leaves you open for let down and pure disappointment. So, the 6 week 4 day old fetus has a strong heart beat. We heard it. We saw it. It was alive. Yesterday, it was alive. The blood indicates a threatened miscarriage.
So, k's taking it easy. They tell us the blood could have been from anything. There is still some blood. We can do nothing but wait.

Now, I have this raw heart. This open heart. This heart that saw the beating heart of a little seed.

It is spring. There are many lessons in all the potential bounty. There are reminders of the cycles of life all around us. There are the trees coming back to life and the compost breaking down what once was alive into stuff that will be full of goodness and the potential for even more newness. There are two of us waiting intently for a heartbeat to stay strong. We are counting on spring.

I am learning about hope.