14 years ago I walked down to our sugarhouse in the early morning and leaned against the doors, a piece of me longing to remain there, static, still, until eternity. We never locked anything in those days. I was there to simply close the doors with an eyehook as we expected to be gone for a few days.

Unlike my first pregnancy, I knew at a certain point in my second pregnancy that this child would be born by caesarian. While I was leaning against the rough boards of those doors, my husband and 6-year-old daughter were breakfasting on oatmeal in the kitchen.

I was utterly unprepared to become a mother again. I hadn’t even begun to imagine names for this child — girl or boy, that morning we still didn’t know. But all pregnancies end, one way or another, as everything does in this world. On this 14^thanniversary of my second birthing day, I’m always reminded of being on that extremely ancient and utterly contemporary world journey of motherhood, of bringing babes into this world, tending them, raising them, all the while gradually letting go. An infinity of mothers have passed through this earthly realm, and yet, what sacred largesse.