...and exhale

We came home yesterday and I have been walking around in a daze ever since. It's like I walked away from one life so long ago...and now I'm supposed to walk back into it as if no time has passed. The house feels like it belongs to someone else (though the dirty dishes are still clearly mine). I told Steve it's almost like living in a snow globe. Two years ago my life was shaken up and all the pieces flew around without rhyme or reason. Now we're supposed to pick up our previous life...only nothing is where we left it.

I was so excited to leave the hospital. I moved quickly...packing up every single thing in under an hour (no small feat for a woman who just had major surgery and can't even cough without causing incredible pain). And then we were all in the van...ready to go. And I said, "Take me home...take US home," and started to cry. In the deepest, darkest parts of my heart, I didn't expect this day to come. I was so used to the pieces of my life flying around uncontrolled that I didn't think things would ever settle again.

I remember making that drive home twice before. Along that highway with its hills and rivers...beautiful fields and trees in May...warm and bright...everything full and green...and so terribly sad. I had lost hope. I thought I would never again see it realized. But as we drove home yesterday on a cold and rather dreary November day...with bare trees and the slightest ground-cover of snow...I felt hope spring to life within me. It seems odd that it should wait until the deal was done to make its presence known. But I suppose you can't force these things.

And so I had Steve pack up the doppler last night while I cleared space for diapers and wipes and a breastpump on my bedside table. I had every intention of packing it away myself, but the minute I picked it up, I couldn't move. I just sat there on the bedroom floor staring at that little piece of technological plastic in my hands and marveling at the fear resonating from it...as if it somehow retained my emotions during all those days and nights spent worrying. Just a few short days ago I held it to my belly and held my breath. But now the object of all that love and fear now sleeps sweetly in his crib at arm's length. I can exhale.

We drove home past the cemetery...and my eyes filled with tears I thought I had exhausted long ago. Sleep sweet, my boys. Two pieces of my heart in their beds and two pieces of my heart on that snow covered hill. Fear finally banished to someplace where it can not torture me with the same intensity (hopefully ever again). Love and joy and something akin to contentment again taking up residence in my soul.

There are things that seem to be in the wrong place. And I think there will always be things with which I cannot make peace. But there are also things that seem to be just where they should be. I just know that even though I didn't have control over much of it, I can still find happiness in it if I'm lucky.