Twenty-six years ago today

Maybe you, too, have your own calendar of holidays, days that you mark every year in your own way. Days on which you, too, are immersed in memory.

I'm having two of those days right now.

I am totally immersed in the past today, and will be for the better part of the next 48 hours, re-living the day before my son was born, the day, the hours, the minutes, of his birth, and that first instant I saw him, wailing purple in my arms.

That instant, truly, that my life changed. That I transformed.

That I left behind childhood, maidenhood, and arrived in the land of Mother.

All day today and tomorrow I will be remembering all that I can about those days of passage, and I will be feeling grateful for the great gift of this body, this mind, this strength.

And mostly for the great gift of this child.

What a beautiful thing it has been to be his mother, a road that keeps unfolding at my feet, ever lined with surprises.

Twenty-six years ago today.

It seems like yesterday and yet, truly, it's an entire lifetime. His.

So, so happy today, inhabiting this place of memory. Such a gift.

XX