we R us
It took two years for her to get pregnant, and she was half-way around the world when it finally happened. She came home, for the careful care needed for a high-risk pregnancy, and to prepare for another foreign assignment post-delivery.
We had shared a common tribulation. In the years since, we had carried out impossible missions infiltrating enemy territory; sung on stage in smoke-filled Vietnamese bars; packed up; packed out; backed up; backed out; lived in hotels; rolled cocktail parties through the streets in a vintage van and a leather-lined limo; chased sails at the edge of the desert.
We knew the power. Of certain parts. Of the alphabet.
Her mother had made quilts for the children of all her siblings, but now she was not well, and in a faraway state, no longer connected to her own children on some days.
It seemed like such a simple idea at first. Five women. Sixty inches. Four months until delivery. But no equation is simple. There are variables. There are drunk drivers, crushed hands, dissertations, thousands of miles, surgeries, trials, law suits, insertion and removal of biological hardware, glucose levels, new jobs, bad jobs, sick spouses, sick parents, strokes, thesis deadlines, craft anxiety, and Indian food.
And 161 knots.
But in the end, each of us had managed to stitch a piece of herself into the whole. We never know what we're really a part of. Doves of peace, bluebirds of happiness, robins for compassion, and six rabbit fish who will always swim together .
And the river flows on.
Carrying each individual drop to exactly where it needs to be.
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