his existence is pretty much a big 'fuck you' to physics in general

Mainly because of his state of perpetual motion, violating laws of thermodynamics world wide. He's probably a scientific marvel.

He runs.

Everywhere.

He jumps.

On everything.

He's in constant orbit, circling me like the sun.

My son.

He's four today. And as I sit down (finally) after a tiring day, month, year(s) of running, telling, negotiating, rocking, waiting, shushing, putting back to bed, holding, bathing, herding, hollering, carrying, shaking my head in frustration, corralling, ignoring, praising, chasing; I put it in perspective, that all this movement, the constantness of it all, is a gift.

The story of my Sawyer's beginning is at the ending of another's. When the ache of motherhood was new in my heart and the need to fill the emptiness, left us feeling anxious and lost and wild.

And with the rising temperatures of that summer and the unforgiving sun beating down on us, we gave way to that wildness and maniac revelry in which it was easy to forget that,what was missing. Our irresponsibility, an abandonment and blatant disregard to the responsible, carried us through the months of long nights and left us in the end sunburned and tired and wanting.

The wanting being an uninvited guest who nagged and pestered and made its presence known in the wake of happy news from friends, we being at the age of happy news. Until the wanting, no longer content to stand behind wavering smiles and choked congratulations, found its way into my frenzied thoughts, driving me towards a preoccupation with recapturing what I had lost. Leaving me bewildered with my own inability, my failure.

The wanting had made permanent residence within, its consumptive nature peering out from behind my eyes. Until he, pained too, took my sullen face in his hands, looked into the green depth of where the wanting lay and said stop.

And I stopped.

In that airy, light time, leaves blew across our path and the coolness on our skin felt better. We felt better. And we laughed and embraced in the face of our new found betterment. Betterment being a more welcome companion to the wanting.

So that our own happy news, didn't seem news at all on that cold November night. Its arrival just being delayed. We forgave it it's tardiness and waited.

We waited for things to take. For it to be okay. To get past the point where it had ended before. When things had gone awry.

We were hopeful, filled with cautious anticipation, singing Beatles songs. Pleading with it to hold on. To stay.

But then there was blood. It's familiarity allowing me a sense of composure, a numbness.

And this composure carried me on wooden legs, into a darkened ultrasound room where I explained to the woman technician that this was not the first and that I expected the worst. And because of the numbness my words were wooden too, hollow.

Maybe it was that hollowness in my voice or the glassiness of my eyes or maybe it was just that she was a mom too. But whatever her reasoning, she broke protocol and turned the screen so that both her and I would see the silvery images there.

Her voice was soothing and murmuring as she moved the wand across my still flat belly, searching. She held her breath when she stopped and I did too.

"There," she said quietly, with warmth, pointing to the screen.

One blinking pixel.

One blinking pixel, until I am no more, will be the single most beautiful thing I've ever laid eyes upon.

And many months later, in the glow of a summer heat, my Sawyer was placed in my arms. Where I marvelled at the miracle of him and how I thought he had been lost save for the hope I'd found in that one blinking pixel.

This post helps me to remember that gift. These words being effective remedy for motion sickness.