The Fire Tribe

Child,
It has been many days since I've written and I am sorry for that lapse. I read to your belly home and touch-feel for you everyday, but still, I have neglected a precious strand. These words represent a special continuity to me, a way to share the details of life with you, your first days, across all time and understanding. They are like a promise to me.

Much has happened lately. The robins we so fiercely defended have flown. There was a sudden explosion of feathers when your Mom opened the back door and the chicks scattered across the yard. We spent hours rounding the chicks up and planting them in trees, hoping to keep them off the treacherous ground. The cat busy backyard absolutely bustled as felines we'd never before seen appeared magically, feigning nonchalance as they scouted the tall grass on the fringes of the yard. At one point I prowled the yard wearing only a lavender towel around my midriff, chasing cats and hope.

We don't know if any of the chicks survived. They fly and all you can do is wonder.

It's frightening to me how much I love you.

It's huge and scary and amazing.

Pa-

Child,
Your Mom fiercely defends the robin's nest outside our back door. Cats prowl our neighborhood by the hundreds and treat our back step like stadium seating for the baby bird snack show. Or they used to, until your Mom, armed only with a jug of water and an eagle eye, started to intervene. Cats melt away at her furious glance.

We are a family bound with birds. When I courted your mother I gave her falcon feathers, a gift of fierceness. In the minutes before I left her side for a year, from North Carolina for Korea, your mother and I freed a duck snagged on discarded fishing line. Its symbolism may be drawn from a made-for-TV movie, but I hold that small act as significant.

We were both watchful over the doves that nested in our Asheville spider plant. In Thailand we rescued bedraggled sparrows from rainy buckets in our courtyard. And now a family of robins nests outside our backdoor, twittering nervously at the parade of well fed felines that wander by.

There were four blue blue eggs and now there are four scrawny pink chicks that peep feebly when the parents swoop down with their beaks full of worms. Today I saw the first nestlings poking their heads up, beaks open to yellow gullets, vying to be the first fed.

The robin parents have grown accustomed to our comings and goings. They still fly off when we walk out the door, but they settle nearby on the gutter and wait patiently for us to go a few feet away before returning to the nest. I don't know what they think of me and my awkward attempts at one-handed photography, as I try to document their lives with my battered camera and a battered makeup mirror. Nobody likes a nosy neighbor.

I think your Mom's fierce defense of the robin family is a fierce defense of you. There is something essentially hopeful about a family of birds nesting outside your window. You can't help but want to protect them from predators and injustice. We worry for their first flights, like we will worry for your first flights. We know, but don't say aloud, that we can't protect against every risk. It's the scariest thing in the world.

We watch in wonder, grateful witnesses to life's rich pageantry.

Pa-

Child,
Tonight I felt you move for the first time. We laid in bed and I read Charlotte's Web to you and your Mom. She told me you were moving around and so I pressed my hand against your belly home. I can only imagine your gymnastics, magical swimmer that you are. It could have been a hand, reaching out to hold my own. It could have been a foot, kicking me out of there for intruding. It could have been your whole body, bouncing somersaults in your zero gravity chamber. It was a fierce jolt of love and electricity that shot through my arm and into my heart. I pushed my face into that belly and kissed your little hand, your little foot, your fierce heart beating.

There you are.

Pa-

Child,
You are freshly returned from your first international travels. You flew in cramped jet liners, rode in rattling buses and motored around in a sturdy water taxi. Did you feel the movement? Does that movement run in your blood like it runs in ours?

In books we read that you can hear sounds, though I'm sure they are muffled by the internal symphony of the big, beautiful belly where you grow. So then, did you hear the rumbling buses of Guadalajara or the strange, over-amplified dance music that announced the arrival of the propane truck? Did you hear your mom haggle over prices in the bustling street markets or hear me roar with approval as Liverpool won the Champion's League on penalties? Did you hear the waves crashing on the beaches of Melaque or the brass band floating by on the lagoon of Barra de Navidad? Did the birds wake you too? How about the termites, did you hear them at night, chew chew chewing their way through the hotel? Did you hear our voices soften and unwind, lulled by the motion and sweet wonder of it all? Did you hear us talk about raising you in Mexico, immersed in color and language, under the sun and near the sea? Did you hear us loving life, wanting to share it all with you?

They say you can taste things now and that these flavors will be your favorites. There's a risk then that you will only want to eat scrambled eggs and chicken, chicken and chicken. More likely though, you'll love guacamole with chips, sea salt and lime. Did you taste the orange juice, sweet and nourishing like the sun? Or how about fresh lemon popsicles, our best defense against the sun on blistering market days? We think that you love papaya. You wiggled a lot at night when we would sit outside in the cool air, talking and eating fresh papaya, mangos and bananas. Perfect papaya tastes like coffee ice cream, a flavor I hope you remember always.

Books say that you can see now too, but only bright lights beaming in on your red world. I can imagine no light more bright than the Mexican sun. I wonder if you felt the same damp dread we did, coming home to Portland's grey-green, rain-soaked spring.

In your red world, you missed the amazing colors of Mexico: the blue-greens of the sea, the dazzling blue iridescent fish that flickered in the shallows, the vivid woven fabrics and painted animal figures for sale in the markets. I took as many pictures as I possibly could, trying to preserve the colors, to distill their essence, to dive into them through my camera lens. I hope that someday we will wander through the photo albums together, mesmerized by the color and wonder.

I will remember this for you.
pa-

Child,
There are more pictures in sound. Your strong bones glow white and your kidneys are pitch black spots, as they should be. We see your cerebellum and are happy to discover that it's healthy growing. We count your fingers. We try to count your toes, but you are shy about your feet. As the technicain explains the physics of sound painting, your mom does exercise moves in the office, trying to jostle you into proper toe-counting position. You're not having it and we schedule toe counting for another day. I imagine that I will count your toes one million times, amazed by the very existence of your feet and all the rest of you.

This ultrasound is less mythical to me. The first images of your beautiful globe of a head, arms waving, are riveting. As the exam proceeds though, into the fine details of your organs, I am less transfixed. It is eerie to peer into your body like that, to assess your wellness in grayscale, to see your face as a white skull. I am happy to know that you are healthy and whole, uncounted toes notwithstanding, but I feel like I am begging reassurance from science, like machinery can tell me more about you than hope or faith can. It's comforting information, but uncomfortable too. You are not your bones. You are everything.

pa-

Child,
A picture of the orange moon you call home. Your Mom said you were moving like the ocean in there when I took this picture.

pa-

Child,
Again we hear your heart beating. Last time it was a wonderful, nervous sound. This time it is steady pounding. Your heart is strong and true. “There he is,” I announced at the first echo. My sincere apologies if you are my beautful girl.

I can't imagine any person with a heart so strong could be anything less than perfect. We are offered a battery of tests that would give us information about your inner space: do you have abnormal chromosomes, spinal cord problems or other concerns? The midwife gives us perspective, “Think about what you would do with the information.” The implication here is whether or not we would consider terminating the pregnancy and that fierce heart beating.

We accept no tests. You will arrive as you do and we will surround you in love.

Last night I visited with a six year old boy with Down Syndrome. He doesn't speak, he sees the world by spinning it in his hands and he smiles like the sun. Most of my adult life I have worked with people born with developmental disabilities. I know better than most how difficult that life can be. And how magical. I can't imagine telling the hundreds of people I've met over the years that I don't value them, that I wish they'd never been born.

Do I hope you're perfect? Yes, I do. Are you? I think so.

You will arrive as you do and we will surround you in love.

pa-