Well, here we are, short days away from the expected time of delivery. Unlike reasonably reliable public transport schedules in the first world, this arrival is due any time now for another two weeks and there is a sense of needing to be constantly ready. And so we wait; and we clean. The baby will never know how this house gleamed as first breaths got taken, but somehow it feels of utmost importance that everything shines and smells good and sits where it belongs when that moment comes.
The children are watching me closely and I regularly get asked, “Have your waters broken yet, Mom?” No, no, these waters are fully intact and I walk around like an aquarium filled with a herd of elephants. How can one tiny child move so? I can almost tell this little one is thinking, “Surely there is more to life than this?” as little limbs kick repetitively, seeking more room, longing for a great stretch. The light of day is waiting, more space than you will ever fill is waiting, more love than you can fathom is waiting. There are clothes and blankets and little areas all over the show that are waiting for you to fill them. There are arms, so many arms, and beating chests waiting to hold you close. The floors are shining, the bathrooms are twinkling like stars, there are biscuits in tins and the fridge is full. If you don’t come today, the great outdoors will make its way back inside again tomorrow as your siblings move about. The bathrooms will show evidence, once again, of ablutions and blood noses and dirty, half-washed hands on the towels. The food will get eaten, trust me, it will get polished. People are growing in this house. And we will bring everything back up to scratch all over again tomorrow; in anticipation of you.
The other day my mom sent me a quote that went something along the lines of, “The months all have about thirty days except for the last month of pregnancy, that has one thousand.” It’s like that isn’t it? The closer we get to receiving what we have longed for, the slower the clock ticks. Albert Einstein said that time flies when we are having fun though, so I reckon we will fill the week ahead of us with not only frenzied bursts of housework, but a great deal of fun too.
It has been the longest, hottest summer I can remember. The faultless blue skies and blazing sun mean that washing dries almost as it’s being hung. Stains get naturally bleached and when the basket of clean, dry clothes comes back into the house where we fold each piece, it carries the purest scent of the great outdoors. This dry spell is good for laundry, but not so good for this parched land. It can’t go on like this without divine intervention. Today the clouds have begun to roll in. Can we let hope rise? Swollen ankles…slow-moving…laden with expectancy. My prayer is that, this week, the waters will break in our home and in this great, waterless, African sky too, and that new life will burst forth in a dry and weary land. Let it be so. Amen.
Psalm 63 v 1, 6 & 7: “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.”
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