Exactly one year ago today, I saw two lines. The pink  stripes glared at me, challenged me, petrified me. They thrust me into a life that I was sure I wasn’t ready for.  I looked down at the box of the pregnancy test.

“99% accurate!”

Lord have mercy.

How could I carry a life when I wasn’t even sure of my own?     

Jamie and I sunk down into the cool, iron chairs on my patio, listened to a faraway radio and stared at my belly, as if it would reveal something. We saw nothing. And, for a moment, I’m pretty sure we felt nothing.

Numb in the August heat.

A beer (for Jamie), an orange juice (for me) and a back-up test later, we were having a baby. In quick succession, I would also have my book on the shelves, go on a seven week-long book tour, get health insurance, plan a wedding & a (mini) honeymoon, swallow my first horse-pill-of-a-prenatal-vitamin and become a frequent shopper at ”BuyBuy Baby.”

And somewhere in there, I began to let go…just a little bit. I allowed myself to surrender to a plan that was much bigger than anything I could ever schedule in my blackberry, write on my calendar or plan out with my agent.

Two would become three. And that baby– and those two lines–would, somehow, point us in the right direction.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 7:10 am and is filed under Family, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.