The morning is thick, soft, quiet with woolen fog. We are parting the dove-gray smoke as we drive past rickety farmhouses nestled among sleeping fields. The island is tranquil, taking a breath before the next winter storm. And then suddenly the shroud dissipates into a luminous horizon before us, gold diffusing upward into a pale blue sky. Continue reading
My Body
This is my body, given up for you.
I’ve reflected much on Christ’s words throughout my pregnancy. I do not recognize this rotund belly, cute perhaps but often in the way, which has rejected my once-comfortable jeans. I have no say over what position my child takes in my womb, whether that be jabbing an elbow into my belly button or otherwise. What nutrients may be lacking in my diet—but are required for this little growing person’s development—are drawn from my own body’s reserves.Continue reading
A Child Again
In carrying a child in my womb, I think I myself am, in a beautifully ironic way, slowly becoming a child again.Continue reading
Awake, Awake
As I await the advent of our first child, I am becoming familiar with its every movement. On the day of birth, I will indeed recognize our little one, this original creation I am coming to know already.Continue reading
Waiting Out the Storm
I was awakened when it was yet dark out, a wailing wind luring me from bed to the window. Peering out, I watched rain lashing viciously at Saint Patrick the statue, a resolute sentinel guarding our home against the storm. Back into bed I crawled, safe and warm.Continue reading
Watercolor and Love
After a morning spent watercoloring a few charcoal sketches, I buttoned up my coat and took to the dirt road near our home, which cascades down between cropland and flows between wild apple trees further on. This summer, the fields were seeded with corn. When they were at their height, the paper stalks formed castle walls on either side, green in summer, golden in autumn. Sapling maples fringe the road, bursting sweet berry-red to distract from the now-naked fields. Scattered kernels are the only vestige that a castle ever existed on this island.Continue reading
Earthen Heart
A glimpse
of sweet you,
hidden in the haven of my womb
Show me
your little face,
smucked with raspberry jam
Round eyes
bluer than
the wilds of berries in August
You’ll take
my earthen heart,
perfect it in muddy hands
But see,
this earthen heart
is already moving for you
Inhale the Air
When the future is a haze, the sky is still candy-blue over me. And in the orchard, where the branches reach to entwine their fingers and the apples smile in the sunlight, ruddy-cheeked, life is solid in my hand, sweet and simple. Continue reading
The Extraordinary Blossom
I am but one among the countless number. I notice pregnant women everywhere now, at the store, walking by, in church—and this is only on Prince Edward Island, a dust mite on the map. Closing my eyes, I picture the telltale swell beneath a vibrant sari, an exposed black belly gleaming beneath the sun, the bump betraying a princess’s secret, or the hidden package of a frightened teenager curled up in a bathroom. Whether by surprise or not, we are all carrying what may seem ordinary, given its universality, but is truly extraordinary: new life.Continue reading
Big Skies
Two little boys, like tin soldiers abandoned on the dusty road, and two little dogs bounding at their feet, one white, one brown. A wheat field to the east, smoldering in the dusk, and swaths of curing canola to the west. Above: blue ripening to rose-gold, in every direction, unhindered by mountain or forest. And a farm, autumn spinning its wreath of trees into a golden crown.
My home.
My last glimpse was one I clung to until the last moment. I suppose I feared that in letting go I would lose what I found during my time away from the island—no, not found, but rediscovered. Surrounded by the people who know me and love me best—my mother, father, siblings, and husband—I rediscovered freedom.
I think it is easy to become an island when you live on an island. The world is smaller here, the horizon closer, more mysteries unveiled than not. And yet the sky above is infinite, as it is anywhere else. Discouraged by the boundaries enclosing me, I ceased glancing up to drink of the pure air pouring down from Heaven; my eyes slipped from God’s face. And when you begin to believe there is nothing more to discover outside yourself, your gaze will turn inward, like a wounded rabbit crawling into its warren, where the world is safe and dry but utterly dark.
Big skies. Timidly at first, I poked my head from my hole and peered out. When I saw my family beneath those big skies, delighting in the blue, the breeze, the sunlight washing over them, I realized they were safe, happy—and free. And I could be too. Not strong enough on my own, their love assured me that surrendering my fear would not hurt.
No matter where God places us on this earth—no matter whether my husband, our baby, and I are called to live on an island or not—I know that so long as I look up, I will always find my freedom.