And I was a child, and she was a child, in the kingdom by the sea

Today, July 10, I am 22 weeks pregnant. Usually this is my favorite "size" and when I feel the most attractive with a baby bump, before the flesh slides around all the rest of my bones, but it's different here in Mexico because I slip on a skin-tight suit every day and see this bloated belly that everyone else presumably believes is empty, I can't suck it all the way back anymore, and I can imagine the way they feel sorry for me, the conversations they might have about how Natalie bounced right back (Lorraine body) and Rachel didn't (lazy body, fighting against her genes). My mother took a picture with me in the background that looked so distorted from my perception of myself (which somehow remains optimistically positive) that it sickened me. I have to be honest that I wasn't in great shape before I even got pregnant, but waddling around in this bulbous body, when I am supposed not to be, embarrasses me. It feels like I am taking on the physical form of what my family believes me to be, weak, undisciplined, silly, sloppy. I still prefer that over telling the truth, though, which would affirm their suspicions in other ways. I don't want to hear it, I want to keep it from being thought as long as I can.

Yesterday at the market I was talking to a kind family who lovingly admired the babies and one woman put her hand on my belly and asked me "Otro?" and I wanted to tell her, open up to someone I knew would be warm and happy and then never see me again, but I saw some members of my party watching, so I shrugged and shook my head. "No esta llena," she confirmed. But it is! I feel badly for denying my little one, but at the same time, h/she will belong to us and doesn't belong to the world, and somehow that feels good, too, to keep our little secret close to us.

I talk to the kids all the time about Baby Tarzan and they kiss and rub my belly. Even Sparrow says "Baby!" now when she pats me and Chai has conversations with me about how baby Tarzan will be "so, sooo cute" but he may hurt him if Tarzan plays with his tools. He asks if baby Tarzan will come out my butt, or my "bagina." I tell him and he says thoughtfully, "I think your butt, too, though." He's not totally wrong. :) Yesterday we were cuddling and he said "I don't want Baby Tarzan to come out." I told him we have awhile before that happens...but how can I not feel the same? My heart just aches for my sweet baby girl, too. She has no idea, she will be blindsided, I don't know how to maintain our sweet symbiosis. I have loved it so much ever since we stopped nursing. She loves to touch my nose, her nose, my ears, her ears, my eyes, her eyes...her place of peace is on my lap making faces with me. Her little arms are constantly reaching for me and she knows just how to tuck her head under my chin, fold her arms under her body and lean in and rock...I just want to keep rocking her, I just want to keep balancing the hours between these two. I want a natural, gradual shift in our baby dream world that is instigated by her growing and not being "untimely ripped" away from me, like Chai was. It hurt him, it hurt him deeply, and I can never deny that. Sometimes I marinate in this perspective and then feel jolted out of it when I read a story of tragedy and loss and consider that never-ending missing. Hopefully, that fierce hurt won't be the end, and we can continue building and creating and loving each other as we all suffer through the winter. It's just hard on this end with nothing but a hidden goldfish bowl and quiet nudging to imagine the beauty and good that may come forth.

Mexico is always a dense cluster of feelings for me, embedded with some bitter and spicy nostalgia of this beautiful ghost self wandering around listening to her headphones, pining, pining. Those feelings clutch me worst at night and when I see my Grandfather walking painfully from the condo to the pool, to the wall, making his rounds, greeting everyone with the same story. He is revered, but it is more difficult to deeply connect with him than it used to be. For me, at least, I feel so aware of the shadow unfurling at our feet that I feel silenced. I also feel like my goodbye, my piece of honoring of what we have shared, has to come in the form of the final poem. It's a quest I need to complete, but I feel woefully inadequate. I know he will be appreciative and kind of whatever drivel I dribble, but I want to do better than that, I want to know in my heart that I created something real, captured some magic and that he felt it. But time is running out.