Yesterday, The Husband and I shuffled to the hospital for another photo session with The Kid, i.e. ultrasound, to check on both his and my condition. We got a good report, meaning he’s likely to stay put for a few more weeks. Though if he wants to arrive, say, three weeks early, it wouldn’t hurt our feelings. I’m completely aware of the fact that a new era of sleeplessness awaits us upon his debut, but once he’s not renting space in my belly, I’ll at least have my body back–and not be subjected to the joint pain and limb numbness that plague me now. Also, I could celebrate Jesus’ birthday with some serious cocktails.

TK decided to show us his face this visit, and he continued to display his affinity for breathing practice and toe-holding. Then the ultrasound tech pointed out his hair and I almost lost it. I’m watching him become a person inside of me, and that process has me considering the kind of person, the kind of mother, I’m going to be in response.

Oddly, that consideration was recently reflected in my online search for a diaper bag. I ascribed weighty significance to finding the perfect accessory: I’m not a bells-and-whistles type who compares customer ratings with product details to discover this season’s most innovative product; I just wanted something that didn’t scream MOMMY. For over thirty-three years, after all, I haven’t been one, and I’ve managed to cultivate an identity apart from that important and imminent dimension of my Self–and I plan on continuing to be more than Mom once I become one. Was it too much to ask to locate a bag that reflected that goal?

Not according to Target.com. I found a gray number that was equal parts diaper bag and purse, function and fashion. As I chose it, I thought about all the baggage that these things carry. And I’m not talking baby wipes and butt paste. I’m talking about the competitiveness that we women have thrived on since elementary school, when we compared Keds colors on the playground and traded scrunchies in the bathroom (no wonder there was a lice issue at my school). Then we got older and stole each other’s boyfriends and lunchroom seats. Then we outdid each other’s weddings and judged each other’s career moves. Now we post on Facebook about what we made for dinner (guilty) and how far we ran and long we nursed. If we’re not careful, these bags carry everything we are–until we ditch them and shift all that baggage onto our kids’ backs, depending upon them to boost our self-esteem and show the world what a great job we did. No wonder moms get so little sleep–we’re exhausted by all this role-playing.

Thankfully, I reached a point in my life where I could no longer pretend to have it all together because it was so painfully evident that I didn’t. So now I get to write about how imperfect I am: how each day of this pregnancy has come with its own bipolar tendencies, how I have neither given up caffeine nor totally ditched alcohol, how it took me awhile to look at the image onscreen and feel something real. I’m not going to be a perfect mother any more than I’ve been a perfect mother-to-be or any more than I’ve been perfect, period. When I think about all the ways I’m going to screw this up on a daily basis, all the reasons I’m going to give that little one cause to stop grabbing his toes and start noticing my flaws, it’s enough to drive me to the boxed wine waiting on the counter. Then I realize that the sum of a mother, of a person, is not in whether she banked cord blood or bought the highest-rated stroller. The one thing that bag will always have room for is grace: the grace that sent me to New York rather than to the wrong person; the grace that lifted me out of my deeply-bred insecurity and people-pleasing and set me on more spacious ground; the grace that reminds me daily of how far I have to go but also, that I never again have to be where I was.

The other day I gazed lovingly upon the bookcase that TH had assembled the night before, then realized that the charger for my computer had been displaced by this new piece of furniture. I hate displacement, but I tried to stay calm and texted him, asking where said charger might be. Seconds later, he replied that he had cut a hole in the back of the bookcase so that my charger would have a perfect place to fit–and stay where it was. Sure enough, I opened the cabinet and found my charger right where I had left it, a home created for it by the one who looks upon my flaws and is somehow filled with love anyway. Maybe his son will too. Grace, after all, makes room for everything.

It was a big weekend for The Husband and me, by pre-baby standards at least. We know that in a few weeks we’ll look back on these days of waking up at 9 (or 10…) am on Saturdays and having a maximum of two commitments on the To-Do List as a heavenly, bygone era, but for now…shut up and don’t judge. We’re trying to enjoy our last days of freedom here.

On Friday I finished my fiction manuscript, and not with a bang but a whimper. Sitting at Barnes and Noble, I typed the last character and looked around, wondering if everyone else felt the thrums of America’s Next Great Novel reverberate through their souls. No? Not so much? Now comes editing and agent-contacting, so we’ll see what happens there. That night, TH and I went to a high school football game (the first half at least–all my back would allow) to sit with one of our friends as her husband coached from the press box. Their own baby is a six-month-old boy whose preceding of ours has been an invaluable source of information and commiseration. To know just one other person who has suffered through numb fingers is to feel a little less alone in the world.

Saturday morning, we awoke early (8:30 am) to head to a Fall Festival sponsored by our church for the community where we do outreach activities. TH and I manned the Bounce House, and by that I mean he ran interference with the kids while I watched from a chair nearby and issued directives like, “Go down the slide! Take your shoes off! Don’t kick each other in the head!” The acrobatics and pure joy happening behind the house’s netting were a wonder to behold, the kids lining up at the entrance in their socks and bouncing their way through to the slide, which deposited them on the ground again. They headed straight from there to the entrance, repeat customers all, and I was reminded of the days when bouncing was a singular ingredient of happiness, when wounds were so temporary and laughter so available. Then one of the little boys inside the house threw a punch at another boy’s face, and TH had to ban him from the house. “But I didn’t punch him!” the kid protested, to which TH replied, “I saw you do it.” “It wasn’t a real punch,” the kid muttered, kicking the ground as he stomped off in tears.

The Kid inside my belly showed me what a real punch was as TH and I shook our heads, wondering what we’ve signed up for and how it reflects upon our decision-making skills. Then I hopped in the car to celebrate a friend’s birthday with her and The Sis. We went to a fancy French place in downtown Roswell, the kind of place where champagne vinaigrette and oysters are menu options, and I felt the culture shock that accompanies switching from a Spanish-speaking Fall Festival to the Ladies Who Lunch scene. And stared longingly at my friends’ glasses of Brut. (Hurry up , Kid! Mommy can’t fly without her bubbles!)

On Sunday, TH and I (read: TH, as I sat in the car) picked up our final big addition to the nursery from the aptly-named Comfortable Chair Store: a swivel-glider-recliner in chocolate brown. TH carried it up the stairs and assembled it, then invited me to try it out. Thirty minutes later, I was still sitting there, near tears over my immersion in luxury. I felt like I was getting a Life Massage, and I tell you–this chair is reason enough to have a kid. On the sleepless nights when I question our decision to procreate, I will sit in this chair and feel validated. I heard TH outside, mowing the lawn. I smelled the suburbia-issued fresh-cut grass scent wafting through the window. I felt The Kid elbow me, silently approving of our new perch. I closed my eyes, thinking of all the jumping around I’ve done in life, the frenetic attempts to find my way, and how they’ve led me here: a place to land and rest. A place to call home.

The Husband and I dutifully set our DVR a few weeks ago to record Up All Night, as it chronicles the life and misadventures of a couple with a newborn–in other words, us in a few months. The show’s advent couldn’t be a better example of perfect timing: if the material scares/scars us, it’s too late for us to back out of having kids; on the other hand, we have some time to be educated by what we watch before our own bundle of joy and vomit arrives. This week featured the baby’s birth, along with the mom’s insistence on her eighteen-page birthing plan because it was the only thing allowing her to hold it together. Girl, I hear you.

Up until now, I approached all of life with that fervor. Now, though, I am conspicuously absent one birth plan. I’ve been taught a few things about my plan; namely, that it’s cute and all, but not likely to happen. My script entitled How The Universe Should Operate would be taken by a lesser god and treated the way most OBs/Labor and Delivery Nurses probably treat eighteen-page birthing plans: as toilet paper. But my God shook His head lovingly, pried the script from my hands, and orchestrated a different outcome. And that outcome has shown me that He knows what He’s doing, so I can just drop the pen and relax.

Yesterday morning, I sat in my car on a bridge waiting for a light to let me onto GA 400 and mused, “Hmm. What if this bridge falls apart right now?” These are the scenarios that cross my mind now that I have so much to lose (although let’s be honest, they crossed my mind even when I was single; I’ve always entertained an overblown view of how much I contribute to the universe). Plane flights and car rides are scarier these days as my heart becomes more inextricably tied to the well-being of my growing family. Yesterday I realized that all of life is a bridge, I’ve just convinced myself along the way that I was on solid ground, holding things together on my own. Nope. I’ve been held, the bridge kept from collapse by hands other than my own, by plans written with another’s pen.

A few hours after my bridge moment, TH and I went for a routine ultrasound. The ultrasound tech pointed out The Kid, folded up like a suitcase with his feet next to his smiling face. Then she checked out some other stuff and stopped talking so much. A few minutes later, I was hooked up a monitor that looked like a lie detector with a little needle tracking contractions. As we approach week 30, things are thinning out and getting dicey, and we need to keep TK in there cooking as long as possible. The nurse came over to read the results, saying, “Yep. You’ve got some uterine activity going on,” she said, as I wondered what the hell that meant: so my uterus isn’t living a sedentary lifestyle? That’s good, right?

Apparently not.

Instructions were given; one-week follow-up appointments made. TH tapped away on his Blackberry, rearranging meetings, and my concerns veered more toward whether this extended appointment meant we wouldn’t have time for our ritual post-ultrasound trip to Dunkin’ Donuts. Tell that to ten-years-ago me, who would have been crying and demanding her headband and eighteen pages. “But I have a birth plan!” I would have screamed, waving it in the nurse’s face. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you people?” Now, though? I’ve switched allegiances. In the battle between Holding Things Together Myself and Letting Go and Being Held–and we all belong to one team–I’m actively choosing the latter. I’ve scrapped plans for prayers. The biggest rescue of my life looked, at the time, like a massive amount of falling apart; I know now not to judge a situation by what shows up on the monitor. Faith is what loosens my grip (literally, right now: pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel has left my fingertips numb and rendered me incapable of gripping anything) and frees me to cross bridges and watch needles without fear. Someone else has got this. Someone else always has. I can now pack (eighteen pages) lighter.

When The Husband and I were discussing paint colors after we moved into our house, there was one in particular I had in mind: red. I’ve always loved the warmth of a deeply red room, and I went to Sherwin Williams and picked out a color called Poinsettia for our den. After TH successfully coated the nursery walls in Rhythmic Blue, he decided to take on the Poinsettia downstairs and recently finished the den-bathroom combo job. I was removing the painter’s tape from the baseboards the other day and watched as little flakes and drops of red materialized on white. I sat on the floor and leaned over as much as The Kid would allow, scrubbing at the paint with a cleanser-soaked paper towel and fingernails. Red on white–few combinations are more noticeable.

You would think it should be my favorite color, red: we’ve coated part of our house with it, including the front door; it’s the hue of my hair; it describes my face whenever I’m hot, embarrassed, angry, nervous, winded, sunburned, just about anything. The other day I was answering a marketing research survey for cash (Indignities of the Unemployed, Part 34) and was asked what color best describes me. I answered with my actual favorite color–blue–and when asked to explain why, answered, “because I’m calm.” Then my face turned red at this bold-faced lie and I was glad I wasn’t being questioned in person. From the flaring of my temper to the fairness of my skin, red would have represented the truth.

Minutes after The Niece was born, the Bro-in-Law texted that she had red hair, and The Sis and I were thrilled that her locks maintained the hue over time. Then I got pregnant and discovered one of the many biological facts associated with carrying a child; namely, that my blood volume would increase by 40% to support this new life (that’s 2-4 pounds of just blood, y’all). A good portion of that volume was removed earlier this week when I underwent a three-hour glucose test to find out if I have gestational diabetes. When I arrived, and every hour thereafter, I was stuck with a needle in alternating arms and watched my blood fill a tube: deep, red, plentiful. Blood donation for a greater cause. The last round, the phlebotomist couldn’t–despite several jabs–locate the vein in my left arm, so she switched back to my right. It’s worth it, it’s worth it, HE’S worth it became my mantra as my stomach cried out for relief from fasting and I watched the tube finally fill. Then, the bandages on both arms; the return to the bathroom floor and the scrubbing of red from white; red taken on The Kid’s behalf and splattered by TH on mine. The color of sacrifice. The color of life.

On Wednesday, I twisted the cap and broke the seal of my orange glucose beverage, downing it in five minutes then hurrying to the doctor’s office. I felt sure that I wouldn’t screen positively for high sugar–after all, Halloween is coming up and the last thing this nation needs is for candy corn factory workers to lose their jobs because I can’t partake this year. Even though The Sis had gestational diabetes, and much about our pregnancies and lives mirror each other’s, I was confident. They stuck my finger, gathered the blood, and I waited.

The doctor arrived in my exam room and checked my chart. “Oh no!” she said, and my heart skipped a beat–those are words you never want to hear from a doctor, especially during a pregnancy that hasn’t been problem-free already. “You failed your glucose test by one point!” You want to know what the hardest part of that statement was for me to hear? Not the implication that I might have gestational diabetes; not the fact that I was headed for a three-hour test requiring a fast; but the word fail.

Old habits die hard.

I almost asked her to rephrase the diagnosis as I had not studied for this test and therefore could not be held responsible for my results. For the majority of my life, my identity was founded on my ability to test well, and though grace has broken me free from most of those chains (after a substantial amount of fighting and scarring), the old ghosts still cast shadows. “I feel like a loser,” I told The Sis when I called her. I remember telling my counselor the same thing seven years ago when all my friends were getting married and I was planning an escape from the South to New York. And that turned out pretty well, didn’t it?

The next day, I showed up at the apartment complex for the weekly outreach. This week was a prayer meeting, which is not as big a draw as the biweekly lunch meetings, so only one kid was there: the one who flicked me off last week. He sauntered up in his hat and sweatsuit and I was charged with keeping him alive for the next hour and a half. Sadly, the TV/VCR combo wouldn’t cooperate, so we headed outside with a package of bubbles. We both stood in the middle of the desolate playground, which boasted a slide and two broken swings. “Why are the swings broken?” he asked, and rather than get into a political discussion, I just said that I didn’t know as I gazed over the barbed-wire fence. So we sat on a wooden bench and opened the bubbles.

Things were going pretty well for awhile; we had a pleasant discussion about bubble shapes and wind. Then he chased a bubble for a few feet and popped it, yelling, “That’s what you get, FUCKER!” I looked at him and said, “Excuse me?” He smiled back beatifically and sang, “I didn’t cuss.” I shook my head, amazed at the language he must hear at home even as I recalled the night before, when I had spilled water all over the floor and yelled the same word. And according to What to Expect, my son can hear my voice by now. Oops. Move along, people–nothing to see here. After a few more minutes of playing my new friend told me he was going to leave me at the playground overnight so that Michael Myers would come and get me. Has this kid seen my voting record? And I thought we were doing so well.

The ghosts have a way of reappearing, especially this time of year, but toys and sun and wind have a way of connecting. Despite the verbal setbacks, we shared laughter and awe, watching rainbows bounce off the bubbles as they floated through the air. By the end of the morning, he only occasionally glared at me with suspicion. At one point, he even trusted me to lift him up to a high beam so he could cling to it for two seconds before letting me bring him back to earth. “Watch me!” he cried next, tearing across the sand as my own boy kicked madly away inside.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been able to live out my dream of being a writer. But the dream and its reality always have their differences, don’t they? The first one, in this case, being that mine came true only after I lost my job for daring to get pregnant. Cut to The Husband and I (and by that, I mean The Husband) frantically re-budgeting and paying attention to coupons and conditioning ourselves not to cringe when the credit card bill shows a balance each month. The Sis and I were talking the other day about what a Perfect Job is, and concluded that it doesn’t exist. Because as much as I’ve dreamed about being a writer, my dreams included being paid for it (still waiting on that). I also didn’t factor in the solitude that comes with keeping a writer’s schedule; the self-doubt that must be beaten back on a daily basis; the exhausting inner dialogue, made up of pep talks and mantras, that has to happen some days just to move my fingers to the keyboard. I’m counting my productivity in terms of words rather than teeth, but it turns out that work is still work.

I’m not complaining, well aware of the fact that I have no right to. I’m currently sitting on my couch next to a cup of coffee and my greatest concern is the tree being cut down in the yard next to me, the sound of chainsaws intermingled with rapid-fire Spanish, the hope that lumber doesn’t land in my laundry room. I’m just saying that life has a way of looking different from what we expected, even when our hopes are fulfilled, and that’s not a bad thing. Not to mention that the whole hope-fulfillment, dreams-coming-true scenario? Sometimes it involves a fair share of loss and disappointment on its way to becoming reality. And all of this is necessary; nothing is lost on the journey.

A few years ago, during my desert-wandering period, I was spending time in one of my favorite places–the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. I was walking through the trees, looking for a piece of inspiration to cling to. I looked down and picked up an acorn. I remember staring at it, wondering whether it had any potential to turn into a tree, considering tossing it into my pocket as a symbol of the truth that everything starts somewhere, usually somewhere small. Then I threw the seed back on the ground and bitterly dared God to prove himself in the moment and turn the acorn into a tree before my eyes. He didn’t. Ha! Miracles, I scoffed in my petulance, leaving the garden behind–and having no idea what I was walking toward. It all just looked like a mess to me.

It turned out that change was happening, just not on my terms or according to my timeline. For so long, I was looking for a deus ex machina moment–for Something to reach down and pluck me out of the rubble of my life and fix everything, order it neatly according to the blueprint I had helpfully drawn up. I thought that rescue was the only valid miracle for my situation. I was wrong. I wasn’t being lifted out; I was being walked through.

And now, when I head to Barnes and Noble and listen to the guy take a conference call nearby, hear the two men with their incessant cell-phone ringing and loud, competitive conversation, I look at my screen and wonder if I’m working on the next great American novel or a pile of crap. I think of the life growing inside me and consider all the ways we will disappoint and uplift each other over the years. And I realize that the only thing that makes it all worthwhile, the only thing that keeps putting hands to keyboard and sweat into nurseries and rings on fingers and words into prayer, is faith. The belief that the direction in which I’m headed is not off a cliff, but is being fashioned such that the Now and the Not Yet are essential components of the Next, that sometimes what I cling to must be released in faith and left behind in the soil from which I plucked it, the dirt for which it was designed, so that some matter of time later I can look around and see all that has grown since.

Living in gratitude doesn’t happen by default. It is a series of choices in moments that span the range from brokenness to wholeness, events that shatter and seconds of clarity.

Yesterday, I showed up at the low-income apartment complex where my church does a weekly outreach. The women walk in, many with their kids, and experience food, fellowship, crafts, and study. I pulled into the complex looking for the apartment where all this takes place. For ten minutes I drove around the buildings, looking for unit 74. Naturally, I couldn’t find it, even though I ended up passing it three time before the number clicked in my brain. Until then, I grew more and more frustrated. I realized I had forgotten to put on deodorant, so I began to sweat profusely. I carried on the worst of internal dialogues: What is wrong with you?! Why do you always go this? I hurled thoughts upward in the general direction of God: I’m trying to HELP people, dammit! Why can’t I just find this apartment so I can HELP PEOPLE??!!

A few minutes later, I was assigned my post as one of the keepers of the children, and they filed in with their mothers, who told them goodbye and left them in our hands. The first boy, about four years old, approached me and announced, “I can hold up one finger.” Then he flicked me off with both hands. A second later, another little boy–this one about age two–stumbled over in a shirt that proclaimed, “I HAVEN’T BEEN HERE LONG, BUT I CAN ALREADY TELL MY FAMILY IS FUCKED UP.”

Good God, I thought. Where am I? And,  where can I get that shirt? I need something to wear this Thanksgiving.

A few hours later, The Husband and I watched The Kid appear onscreen in one of his ultrasound performances, and this one was quite a show: he grabbed his leg under the knee, threw an arm in the air, kicked me repeatedly, and gave us a thumbs-up. He weighed in at two pounds and a few days older than originally projected. In other words, he’s already kicking ass. I watched him in there and considered what he’s being born into: imperfection, to be sure (especially on the part of his mom), but also–a freshly painted nursery replete with Dad-installed ceiling fan and Dad-assembled dresser and changing table, prints on the wall, fancy bed. No one around here is going to teach him obscene hand gestures or throw a profane t-shirt on him (not for awhile, at least).

And to think, some days I don’t even spend a moment thinking about how good I have it.

Part of TH’s weekend efforts included replacing my shattered car mirror. (Remember that?) I got into my car this week and glanced over, prepared to squint through broken lines and multiple images, and instead saw a perfect reflection. There are times when sadness penetrates my easy self-centeredness and shocks me into thanks. Then there are the moments when love and kindness do the same. It’s enough to make you think that all things of meaning have one Source.

The Husband and I are in full-on planning mode (one of my favorite modes in which to be, as you can imagine) for the arrival of The Kid. With roughly three months to go before his debut, we are prepping his room. And when I say “we,” I mean, of course, TH laboring through sweat and frustration as I occasionally climb the stairs and offer snacks and encouragement. And, from time to time, opinions. Some solicited, some not.

We picked up the dresser we ordered online this weekend, and we had to go to Wal-Mart to do so. I haven’t been there for awhile, and about two minutes after we walked through the automatic doors, all I could do was murmur “Target…Target…” pitifully under my breath, but the hard part was just beginning. After TH lugged the mammoth box up the stairs, he faced the task of putting that beast together. I puttered around downstairs, baking banana nut bread and watching The Others (ooh! creepy!) while enjoying the scent of the pumpkin pie candle we had just purchased. After about an hour, I heard TH’s version of anger floating down the stairs: phrases like “Come on!” mixed with colorful language and sighs of frustration; questions like, “How does this make sense, guys? HOW DOES THIS MAKE SENSE?” directed at persons not directly present. When TH emits reactions like these, I, in turn, react in two ways: (1) slight fear due to the infrequency of such anger from him; and (2) slight satisfaction at the fact that I’m not the only one around here with a temper. (Though I am the only one who uses it irrationally on a regular basis.) With this week’s premiere of Modern Family, I realized that I am the Mitchell of this relationship: picky, fussy, absent a penchant for sharing. I voiced this epiphany to TH and he just laughed. And didn’t disagree.

A couple of hours later, the dresser was assembled, and it was time to attack the ceiling fan. Similar reactions ensued, and I went on baking bread and checking in occasionally. By the time dinner rolled around–I pulling a dish proudly from the oven as TH emerged from the nursery sweating blood and bullets–the bulk of the work was done and all I could contribute to the result was gratitude. And snacks.

So this is what progress looks like in our house: nuts and bolts scattered on carpet, sweat and tears, yells and baking. And I love it. Because you don’t always get to see where you’re headed in life, but in this case, we have a crib waiting for a baby and a family waiting to be added to. And for once, I quell the urge to pick up every little piece of the puzzle that’s lying around, the cardboard boxes littering the hallway and the plastic lining and tools scattered on the floor. When you trust that something amazing is being built, you can rest in the mess. When you know you’re being taken care of, you can endure the scares and go on baking bread.