The times you remember

Today is a significant day in my life. It is a day that, years ago, changed my life forever. Today my first born son came into the world. I remember myself as being young, untouchable, and nieve. I was absolutely content managing a record store and had no intention of looking onwards in my life. As a couple, IACO and I were very much living "in the now". When I first realized that I was going to not only create a little being inside my body, but also squeeze one out from the area I had only associated with pleasure at this point, I was devistated. More than devistated: terrified. I can't even put words to the emotional termoil my thoughts propelled me through. I can imagine that some here experienced the same shock and fears that I did, and hopefully can relate.

From the moment of realization that a foreign body had invaded my very personal space, I had to leave my absolute unabsoluteness behind and start thinking about more than patchouli, skateboard decks, and records. Man, that was going to be tough. I loved my free-spirited lifestyle and the last thing I wanted to do was give it up. But, being I had a new variable added to my equation, I had to calculate my answer and damn if I only had nine months to do it.

I have a belief that formed during the gestation period. Nature intended the whole process to be long, drawn out, and uncomfortable. For me the months of pregnancy gave me time to cope and prepare myself for the creature growing underneath my skin. And that is the way I thought of it throughout the entire thing. The creature, the growth, the thing inside me. I know that is terrible to admit, but that is how it was and I am not going to sugar coat the feelings I had at the time. The lack of comfort involved lead me to a state of urgancy about giving birth. It was going to suck--I was sure--to push it out, but it couldn't be worse than the discomfort I had at that moment? Right? So, with that mentality, even with the lack of glamour, it had pushed me to a point of wanting to have the buggar.

When the day finally came I felt the strangest of feelings. I was...excited!? Wait a minute. The girl who was so disgruntled about the entire thing was showing the signs of joy? If not joy, at least a derivative of it? What happened when the water broke? Did all of that anger and discontent flow out with the warning fluids? It must have. The labor was not intense, not as much as I'd imagined it would be. But, as I was told by the nurses attending me, I was a "lucky one".

Everything changed the moment the pressure was released and my son was born. It still amazes me today how someone can instantly fall in love. And I say that with every truth in my body. The moment I saw that little boy I knew what I had done was right. It was going to be okay.

He changed my life that day and every day. I watch him grow into the little man he is becoming and laugh at myself for being so stupid. To think he would hinder me in any way. He has proven not only that he belongs in this world, but that he enriches my life in every moment. And I am still that free-spirited girl I feared losing, only now I get to share that spirit with my son.