Midwifery

Here I am, sitting and feeling blue. I can't tell you how many times I have sat here at my desk, reading birth stories, watching movies, prepping for class, talking on the phone with an expecting momma, or holding my own little ones - and the same well starts filling. It fills and fills, becoming deep, violet, warm, and encompassing - until I feel the meniscus brim at the ledge of my conscious.

The skin breaks - usually after hours of contemplation, and it begins to run down my mind - rolling in wet rivulets. And I realize once again: I am not just passionate, I am consumed. My passion boarders on obsession - and I crave to be at the birthing, dank, dark, swollen, brimming end of a woman's womb while the purest moment in a human's life unfolds. I want to be baptised in bodily fluid - I want to catch "heaven in my hands".

So why am I blue? 7 years from my first child's birth, since the time this light was first lit under me, and I am no closer to my goal. I dream of dragging my reluctant husband, and giggling energetic brood, out to the Farm and immersing myself in the wisdom of Gaskin. I fantasize of trekking long and dusty trails in Mali to be at the elbow of a darkly lined and glisteningly skilled woman strikingly my junior in years but my senior in insight and experience, while she guides another plump, purple, and pristine jewel out of man's womb and into the belly of Africa.

The limits that we live on perpetuate that I will dream, yearn, pine, and otherwise langish over a dream that will, for all intents and purposes, I can assume will never be fulfilled. I still hope and wait that perhaps, just maybe, I will find a scholarship or sponsor - 'come into some finances' - that will allow me to start my persuit of this happiness.

Until then, I wait, like a pregnant woman, for a miracle to be brought out to take it's first breath and begin a journey solely it's own.