How we got started

Dear Byrd,

Up until now my approach to life has been to run full speed ahead, try to make things happen, and then figure them out once I get there. I have been a lot of places and had the chance to do a lot of things. I have spent time on glaciers, in the tropics, climbed volcanoes, herded sheep, made cheese, shoveled cow manure, climbed on rooves to watch the stars, learned hindi, learned italian, gotten a PhD, fallen in love, shared stories with girlfriends, shared stories with Dad, committed to a life partnership with your Dad.

Maybe the most profound of all is the realization, when I married Dad, that it has to be about daily life. The exciting stand out experiences shaped me and allowed me to break habits and discover how colorful the world is, how full life is. But not much is worth what you get at the end of the climb. Really it is the climb. In my mid twenties I wanted to be a great scientist explorer, to travel to remote places where I would be without electricity or water and collect samples of the natural world that would help us work out the puzzle of Earth, life on Earth, and the evolution of both. I am still on that path, but my sense of devoting myself to work, the element of proving myself as a woman in science, as the youngest in a family of alpha personalities, as a someone who didnt think of themselves as much growing up - that element is still there, but now there are so many other things I want. Daily peace and calm, enjoying life, seeing what is around me, building and growing this new family, and my art. When Dad and I got married I realized that I would blame him and our marriage if I didnt like my life so I had better start doing the things I wanted to do. I have been writing fiction and non fiction since I could write. My mind spills over onto paper, ideas drop out of the sky into my head and either I ignore them or I write them and let them grow. I started trying to build commitment to my writing then, trying to be who I want so that our marriage works and grows.

You are four and a half months now, it was a year ago that we found out we were pregnant. I wanted you in an animal way I could not explain. At some point I realized I was not racing ahead to produce the most academic publications so that I would be the greatest scientist ever, but I was racing to get to the point where I thought I could have children. I thought I need a tenure-track faculty job (your Dad too) and for that to happen I had to be really really good. Academic jobs are tricky, there are a lot of researchers in the purgatory of nonpermanent jobs where they continually have to find grant funding. When I realized I was rushing to have you I stopped and the animal part of me took over. When Dad and I talked about whether we should wait or not we could not make a decision with our rational minds, we talked in circles, neither of us leaning one way or the other. And then we let our bodies decide.

I am in complete awe of you, and I have been since the idea of you first surfaced, since hearing your heartbeat the first time, since feeling you move inside me, since you came out of me and we first saw you.
Love,
Mom