Waiting

The baby is coming

Each morning I wake up and realize today might be the day because Georgia’s baby is huge in that round belly of hers. So huge that she sways when she walks. She’s no longer a graceful guanaco with slender athletic lines. She’s become a sway backed pack animal. Except, instead of trail supplies on her back she’s carrying another being low and underneath who nearly occupies all of her insides.

I didn’t know I’d feel this way—so attached already and into the mystery of welcoming another guanaco into our herd. We weren’t there for Ace and Kooper’s births and we didn’t have the connected relationships with their mothers the way we do now. So, it’s like this is our first baby. The first new life brought into being right on the farm. The first one who started here and will be born here. Its like We are new parents, anticipating the birth of our first child and I can’t stand the wait.

I imagine and wait

My friend Shelley always reminds me to use the preferred outcome technique when I’m in a state waiting or not knowing. She tells me to imagine in vivid detail the very thing I so want so badly to have happen. The thing that would make all the difference in the world. She says, “Honey, there’s no real sense in working yourself into a tizzy.” And then she lovingly coaches me to imagine my preferred outcome and relax. She’s good at it. And, with practice, I’ve become pretty good too.

So in my mind’s eye, I can see little hooves emerging from Georgia as I stand in utter amazement. I can see the little head slide out and hear small bleats coming from the half-in, half-out chulenga. She or he is wet and wobbly with the neck seemingly out of control. The baby wriggles and looks around. I imagine the friends here, who are willing to break social distancing for the miracle of birth. Their focus and fascination feels connecting and being able to share the memory makes it even more poignant. In my future mind’s eye, I imagine that I will replay this moment remembering the circle of friends who greeted the farm’s first baby and how it felt extra special in a time of isolation and virus precautions. I can see the baby slide out all the way as Georgia bends her neck into that graceful curve I adore and she greets her newborn. I can see myself looking into Greg’s tear filled eyes and feeling deeply in love with him, the man with whom I’ve created this life. We will watch the baby try to take its first steps and laugh. We will watch the baby nurse and cheer. We will go to bed that night with a new being in the barn and feel like our lives have changed once again. And it will be grand. It will be a day like no other.

I can see it. I can play the tape in my imagination. And still, I’m waiting.

Waiting and knitting, that is.

It’s always been a thing—to wait and knit.

I knit and wait

It was 1987 and I had met the man I was going to marry. It was a magic moment that involved a beautiful leather bomber jacket, a legal investigator whose last name was Love, and Greg. He was standing in the file room at the Public Defender’s Office where he had worked and where I had just begun to work. He was talking to Kevin Love who paused to introduce us. I shook Greg’s hand and said, “Nice jacket.” That was it. I was going to marry him. It was a truth that lightening bolted through my consciousness. Except I had to wait. His divorce was several months from being complete and I found out he didn’t want to start something new until he was really ready. I didn’t know him, but I loved him. So I turned to the best companion I know for sitting things out—knitting. I broke all knitters’ lore and started a boyfriend sweater. Yes, I’d made many sweaters for boyfriends up until then. And yes, none of those guys stuck, just like the knitter’s lore warns. But, I thought, maybe if this is a “husband” sweater things would be different.

I cast on some vivid turquoise yarn that matched Greg’s eyes. And I knit row after row of stockinette for hours each night after work. I carried my project bag with me everywhere. Just in case I had some waiting to do—waiting on top of waiting—I’d knit and think of the day I’d see the sweater on Greg. We wrote letters back and forth (he in Berkeley and I in Santa Cruz)—and I still knit. I lived with Jen then and she thought it was hysterical. In her British accent she said, “All you bloody do these days is knit!!”

Knitting was my sanity. It was my waiting security blanket. It was my preferred outcome. It was everything that got me through those months before Greg and I got together. That Christmas, many months after the bomber jacket comment, Greg put the sweater on for the first time. Miraculously, it fit him. It looked stunning. And his blue eyes matched especially well when his tears of feeling loved made them shine.

Knitting makes all the difference

You see, for me, knitting is the perfect waiting activity. Instead of turning into a useless blob of dread or excitement, my hands move and my fingers take action. Somehow this tiny repetitive act becomes a release valve for the pent up anticipation and I am calmed. My mind doesn’t race. Instead, it can float into the imaginal world of possibility. Whether it’s a baby’s arrival or finally dating my “husband-to-be” or reuniting with my three kids after our virus quarantine, I will continue knit. Rather than working myself up into the tizzy that Shelley wants to protect me against, my knitting will make all the difference in the world.

Update: Georgia did have her baby!! And I wrote about it here: https://afiberlife.com/carrying-precious-bundles-of-life/