The baby nestles its face in its mother’s bosom. The world outside is cold, brutal, unforgiving, whistling with ice-laced snow, but the baby is aware of nothing but her mother’s warmth. Continue reading→

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→

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→

In carrying a child in my womb, I think I myself am, in a beautifully ironic way, slowly becoming a child again.Continue reading→

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→

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→

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→

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

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→

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→