Times have been a little strange since Elizabeth got back from Utah a couple of weeks ago. She has been "nesting" the whole time, except when she was too exhausted from sinus infections, ear infections, and bronchitis to move around. I've been quite impressed with her stamina and energy lately, though. She goes to bed early and then I stay up much too late reading. The next day, I feel tired and wonder how my wife, who is due to deliver a baby in less than a week, is able to clean the house, organize craft and entertainment bins for Sonora to have constructive stuff to do when Elizabeth is occupied with the newborn, cook and freeze dinners, and organize baby clothes and diapers. At the end of almost every day last week, I felt guilty when I realized I hadn't done very much to help Elizabeth. Sometimes I think I'm a pretty great husband, but lately, when I realize I've spent most of my time at home watching my very pregnant wife work, my positive image of myself is shattered. Today Elizabeth made a list of things for me to do that included fixing a couple of things around the house and washing the windows. I completed the major things on the list, made dinner, and spent a lot of time entertaining Sonora, while also at least sort of listening to all the sessions of conference. So, for one shining day, I felt like a good husband again. It won't last; my lazy side will win out. But it was nice having at least one day during which I didn't feel the slightest bit guilty. The nesting bug must be catching, if only temporary.

Spring is coming rather slowly to the Inland Northwest. It is supposed to snow throughout the night. A Dar Williams song says "February was so long that it lasted into March." This year, February is lasting until April. Our garden is mostly ready for planting, but this is definitely not planting weather. Unfortunately, I really want fresh garden produce right now; I want to make gallons and gallons of fresh salsa. Ripe tomatoes seem like an eternity away.

We've had a couple of visitors. Elizabeth's sister Vanessa came down with her kids from Spokane and also transported Elizabeth's sister Carrie and her son. I had fixed up the old hot tub that came with the house and the kids had fun in it. Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten the water chemistry part of it down yet and the water was pretty murky. The kids didn't mind, and I haven't gotten any reports of weird skin rashes, so nothing was lost, but I felt a little uncomfortable inviting our guests to enjoy our cloudy water. I've since gotten it right and Elizabeth, Sonora and I have been enjoying a clear hot tub.

Carrie and her son stayed for a couple of days. I think they were our first overnight visitors at our new house. There is something validating about having people come to see you. We live in a pretty out of the way place, so there will probably not be many people coming to visit. We got some good tractor (that's what we call our riding lawnmower) time in on a day that almost felt like spring.

Well, Elizabeth just walked out of the bedroom and said "Okay, I'm in labor," so I'd better go. We need to contact the midwife and give her time to drive the 75 miles from Spokane to get here before the baby arrives. Because of a mixture of sicknesses, a marriage, and people moving, virtually all of the people who otherwise might have been here for the birth or helped out afterward are not going to be around, but I think with all that nesting Elizabeth has done, she has prepared us pretty well.

I'm going to try linking to a newer song Elizabeth wrote a while ago. It sort of fits the mood of the post below. Enjoy.

When Elizabeth leaves, I get all sappy and kind of sad. I held out for about a week this time by reading at night, but now I'm really noticing her absence. It's a weird sort of sadness that settles over me when she is gone, and it is deepened by music. Slow, heavy music becomes more appealing at such times and all music seems to be more meaningful and heavier. This auditory weight seems to take on mass and settle into my chest cavity, widening the absence. Right now, I'm listening to that kind of music.

In a way, this feeling is strangely enjoyable. It is similar to that sadness that drove me as a teenager to get on my bicycle and ride for miles along the only paved road that ran out of the village I grew up in and then, miles from my house, just as night was setting in, get off my bike and yell out the name of the girl I had a crush on as if she could hear me and feel my longing. Or the feeling I would get as a teenager that would draw me out of the house to wander, again at dusk, the dusty fields that bordered the Ute reservation, wondering if there really might be an edge where the world drops off into nothingness. Or the time I drove all night from Mesa, Arizona to Colorado because I had a feeling my dad was going to die. He didn't die, but I had many invaluable conversations with my parents because I thought I might never see one of them again. I also climbed onto the roof of their house and watched a sunrise from up there; it was a fiery orange and yellow and to watch it felt strangely like listening to heavy music, like listening to a poem I could feel but not quite understand.

At times like these, my mind inevitably turns toward death. I wonder what it would feel like to lose her and the unborn baby and maybe even Sonora. The emptiness in my chest grows and the weight gets heavier. My arms feel as if they will sink through the chair, through the floor, stopping only at the earth. I picture my inner self falling, collapsing, and then lying like a slug on the ground, letting everything else go, letting emotion spill out like water from a burst balloon. I don't allow myself to fully imagine these possibilities because I don't want to feel that bad and I know that, until it happens, I will never have any idea really how bad that would feel. These thoughts come about any time Elizabeth and I are apart for more than a few days. But as I said, I don't mind this feeling so much because it reminds me of the connection we have. It is a sadness that reminds me that our separation is only temporary, the pain mostly of the imagined sort.

And it carries with it a certain creative energy that makes me want to at least partially see past the superfluous, as happened the time I went to visit my parents in Colorado. In a way, it is cleansing and re-focusing. Part of me wants to get up from wherever I am, whatever I am doing, and go to her, to wander through fields at dusk or ride a bike down highways until I get to her; it's like some kind of weird magnet that my conscious mind is only partially aware of, something I can feel, something my self can feel but that I don't totally understand, though understanding it isn't important somehow.

I'm going to describe an experience that is unabashedly cheesy, but that ties into what I'm feeling right now. A few years ago, Elizabeth and I went to listen to a well-established author read from one of his books. The reading was held in a building that had a lot of artwork--paintings and sculptures--scattered about. Before the reading, we viewed and pondered on the art works, admiring some of them. At one point, I scanned the whole room, took it all in. There was one image that really stood out to me in that survey, but I couldn't remember which one. I just knew that I found it to be beautiful, sublime, and moving, and it somehow made me feel almost giddy. I re-surveyed the room, trying to find the piece of art that had made me feel that way, but I couldn't find it, so I went through the catalog of images in my mind. I realized with some delight that the image that had so moved me was Elizabeth's face as she stared at a work on the wall; I had unconsciously swept her up in my survey of the art collected there and she had made all the other works pale.

Since she has been gone, along with the feeling of sadness and weight, I've been having feelings similar to the Elizabeth-as-art feeling. I might see a photo of her and for a brief instant, before my mind fully recognizes her, I will feel a rush of positive associations with the image. The same thing happened when I saw a picture of my daughter this morning, a picture in which she is making a funny face. Before it registered that I was looking at Sonora, I had a flash of emotion: love, fun, protectiveness, adoration; in the next instant, when I realized I was looking at my daughter, I had a sudden urge to chase her around the house and then swing her on a blanket and toss her onto the couch, to read her a book and teach her a few more German words. But then I realized she and Elizabeth were gone and I stored that urge away; I will retrieve it when they return.

Elizabeth and Sonora have been gone for five days. They are visiting Elizabeth's family in Utah; Elizabeth's grandfather passed away and they are going to go to his funeral. Grandpa Porter was a very good person. I didn't meet him until he was well into his eighties and stooped with age, but his smile still was young and his kindness full and genuine. I'll miss him, though for several years he has been more than ready to go and be with his wife, whom he loved fully. They were one of those couples who made it, who provide young couples with hope; after more than five decades of being together, they still took obvious delight in each other's presence. After she died, he sort of deflated and seemed to gain some hope from each passing sicknesses, as if he was thinking: this one might be the one that takes me away to see her again.

And so Elizabeth has gone away to be with her family and to remember her grandfather. I would have gone also, except that I can't miss more than a day or two of teaching class. She didn't want to make the trip as short as it would have to be to get me back to class, so she drove the 650 miles without me, keeping Sonora occupied with a steady stream of toys and snacks (along the way, Sonora had one of those milestone moments: she peed on the side of the road; Elizabeth told me over the phone and we were both proud of our daughter).

The trip to see her family came at a good time for Elizabeth; she has been missing a connection with other women (she even read The Red Tent for a second time recently, though she usually doesn't read books twice). She wanted to be surrounded by femininity and her seven sisters and mother could provide for this need and they have been. Though she loves our house and our yard and Sonora and me, she gets lonely out here in our village. There are very few women she can connect with and those few are usually quite busy. So when she decided to leave for a week, I was glad for her; she could lower her bucket into a river of femaleness and refill herself.

The problem is that she will come home. I miss her and she is beginning to miss me, but she will soon feel the absence of her sisters when she gets back here, especially as she approaches child birth. Elizabeth will be doing a home delivery and would like nothing more than to have women around to support her who loved her. One will be there for sure and maybe two, but I sense in her a desire to be completely enshrouded and buoyed up by women who were once girls with her. They won't be able to come because the distance is too wide and lives are rooted where they are, but the desire is there.

Soon after Elizabeth and I got married eight years ago, Grandpa Porter visited me to tell me to always treat Elizabeth with respect, love, and patience, no matter what. I've tried hard in my own way to do these things, and, along the way, I've also somehow added this expectation: her complete happiness is my responsibility. She has told me this is a ridiculous expectation and I mostly agree with her, but it is deep-rooted. The thing is, and she is usually mostly glad for this, I'm not a woman. No matter the health of our relationship, I'm a man who does not provide a feminine connection. I will of course be at the birth to support her, to assist her, but I can't be a sister.

Elizabeth is gone right now, and I miss her; I feel a little bit deflated. The wonderful thing is that she will be coming home, and she will keep coming home for a long time. We are slowly becoming no longer a young couple; in less than two years, we will have been married ten years. In forty years, I hope she and I will will have a relationship comparable what her grandparents had at that age. I guess I just need to remember that her sisters and the occasional close friend will be a necessary part of her happiness, and therefore part of mine.

This morning, Sonora and I went for a long walk. It was still foggy and cold when we started out, but I knew the day would soon warm beyond freezing. We came to a spot in the road where the ice was thin and milky white above nothing. I don't really know why ice freezes in flat sheets above a nearly-dry depression in the ground, but I remembered searching out this easy prey when I was a child. "Step on it." I told Sonora and she walked tentatively forward onto the icy patch. It cracked and fell in with a deep, thin, hollow crunch. She laughed and began stomping all around until the whole thing had fallen to pieces; it looked much like a window pane would have after receiving the same treatment. I laughed with my daughter.

One of the unexpected joys of fatherhood has been rediscovering some of the things I liked as a kid. I had forgotten, until the walk this morning, about hollow ice on dirt roads in the late winter. It made me recall other things like sledding down icy roads on steel-runner sleds, or gently eating the very thin ice that forms in protruding ledges from the snow as it melts, coalesces, and then freezes in a day's time. When I was a child and heard the stories of the Children of Israel, I imagined that manna must somehow be like those thin films of ice that stuck out toward me from the ground, offering themselves up for me to collect and enjoy.

I am glad for the reminders Sonora's discoveries give me that I am still with myself, that every day of me is still in me like a hundred thousand Russian dolls packed into one; it is comforting and somehow wonderful. I wonder which of Sonora's memories, in twenty or thirty years from now, will remind her of this idea, will draw her back to her youth, to walking on a dirt road on a winter day that whispers of spring, breaking up irrational ice.

I don't mean to dwell too much on pregnancy and birth, but ideas and topics of discussion concerning birth and pregnancy seem to be enwombing our little family. One thing that has struck me of late is how different the experience in the uterus is from how I had previously imagined it. I've heard the womb being compared to The Garden of Eden: it is warm, comfortable, safe. Getting born is kind of like being thrust out of The Garden: it is cold, scary, dangerous, and annoying. In fact, I even read a book once that suggested that one of the strongest unconscious desires humans posses is the drive to return to the womb. At the time that sounded like an interesting idea. Now I think it is dumb.

Granted, during the first six months following conception, life in the womb might actually be kind of interesting. The fetus has room to flip around, sort of stretch out a little bit. When Mom's belly brushes against a sharp corner, Baby barely feels it for all the amniotic fluid protecting it. But in the third trimester, when the baby is approaching some form of cogitation, when the baby might actually be able to think: "You know, I don't have it so bad, especially compared to all those kids who have to breathe air and wear coats in the cold and be shushed quiet in church," then the baby flips upside-down, and that, I imagine, is when things become less idyllic.

Our baby has apparently turned; she is head-down. Her head is shoved into the top of my wife's pelvis and it is going to stay that way (hopefully, at least for Elizabeth) until Elizabeth delivers the baby in mid-April. What kind of Garden of Eden is that? It would be like wearing a motorcycle helmet that didn't ever move when you tried to turn your head. And you are upside down for months at a time. And you are growing larger and larger, filling up the already cramped space with your legs and arms, which now have to stay folded up all the time. I imagine the experience being similar to going cave exploring and falling into a long hole head-first, a hole that has a recessed area at the bottom into which your head so nicely fits that you can't even turn your head from side to side. This walls of this hole encompass you so thoroughly that your arms are pinned against your sides. Your legs are pressed down against your butt by a pile of rubble that collapsed on top of them. Sure it might be warm and maybe even sort of comfortable in a weird way, but this would also be disconcerting, maybe even alarming.

As for metaphorically returning to the womb, I don't think my unconscious mind longs for it. Give me cold, uncomfortable, bright-lighted confusion. At least I can stretch my legs when I need to.

I know you might be thinking: "Yes, but a fetus has never called anything home but the uterus; she doesn't know any better and maybe she even appreciates her mother's hospitality. The fetus is probably relishing the knowledge that until she squeezes out under that bony arch, she is worry-free: no debt; no obligations; no skinned knees; no one to offend or be offended by." But really, think about it, really think about the physical dimensions of the third trimester for the baby. I think no one (even someone who doesn't really think yet) would like that. Maybe the trauma of birth is a welcome relief.

Snow has been on my mind lately, probably because a lot of it has been on the ground here. School was canceled three times last week. I got to spend a lot of time with Sonora and Elizabeth, which was great. On Thursday, Sonora and I went sledding for an hour, then we built a large snowman (which later fell over because we built it on a hill), and then I piled up snow and dug out a snow cave, or "the little snow house" as Sonora calls it.

We got another six inches last night, but the temperature warmed up to the mid thirties by the time I left for work, so the snow had compacted down to three inches by that time. It is supposed to get into the forties each day for the foreseeable future, so the snow is going to turn to slush and mud and then go away altogether. It will be nice to have dry roads to walk/ride/drive on again, but I'll miss the snow a little bit. There is something romantic, innocent, secretive about the snow. Of course, apple blossoms, warm earth, and late sunsets also have their charm and I'm mostly ready for their approach.

Speaking of renewal and life and stuff like that, it looks as if Elizabeth might get her home delivery after all. The midwife she found a few months ago moved and was no longer available, but my resourceful wife found a highly-regarded midwife in Spokane who is willing to travel down to us (1.5 hours) to do the delivery. Elizabeth was almost giddy when she found this woman. I really hope it works out well with her. Elizabeth is looking forward to the delivery; she wants everything to go the way she has it planned. When discussing the apparent distaste many American women express toward birth, she said she didn't really understand it. She is pumped; she compared birth to preparing for and then running a marathon: it is long and painful and hard, but rewarding and kind of exhilarating. I'm glad I'm not doing it. I don't think I'd be so chipper about it. I think I'd probably describe it as sweating and straining to build a big house (the belly, the back pains, the indigestion), then having the house collapse on top of me (the birth), finding relief only when someone had dragged me out from under the wreckage (a few weeks later when the body is sort of recovered). Of course, the actual baby is pretty cool.