1 2 3 4: The Year of the Stride

A birthday reflection

A line of lime green post-it notes leads me to the coffeepot. On each one, my husband has written a message, welcoming me into the first moments of my 34th birthday. Last night, he offered to bring me coffee in bed in the morning but I told him he should keep sleeping. I wanted to spend the morning alone, writing and reflecting.

A moment later, I received another message, one I was not expecting. It came on my phone, delivered by a website that caters to nostalgia and the wonder of time passing. It came from myself.

Dear Future Me,

Happy birthday! Writing to you from Day 1 of the Mirror Year - 33. I wonder what you're calling 34? I wonder if you're a mother? I hope no matter what, you keep gathering happiness into your basket. Remember: there are no timelines. Only lifelines - the things that tether you and make you who you are, the joys that can't be taken away. Your mother handing you prayer beads, calling you Birdsong. Your husband with a streak of Jade Garden paint across his cheek. The deer visiting in the yard every winter afternoon.

Remember: you came into this world not breathing. You fought for this.

I love you, I love you, I love you. 

Me in the mirror one year ago today.

I don’t remember writing the message, but I do remember that day. I was still testing positive for the pregnancy I’d lost five weeks earlier, still bleeding intermittently and logging every step of my miscarriage recovery in a note on my phone called “MC Progression” (a name I’m certain I’ll adopt for a DJ set someday). I didn’t want to celebrate my birthday. To be honest, I didn’t feel worthy of celebration, not after what happened and the way I was struggling to recover. When I think back on that time—and the months to come—it was all heaviness, bewildering and blizzard-white. But reading those words back, I’m reminded of the many moments of light. I soften at my past self, the way she sought them out even then. I feel such tenderness towards her as she puts her ear to the ground, held by the earth and patiently waiting to hear the small scratchings of joy, when I know in her head was a constant scream.

But a scream is not always a sound of horror. It can also be a declaration of life-force. When I was born, I emerged from my mother blue and not breathing. The umbilical cord wrapped snake-like around my neck, trying to claim me for the other side. Tap, tap the doctor went on my tiny foot. Tap, tap. Finally the red scream came. It tore from my body like fireweed, vowing to take root and thrive upon scorched land. You fought for this.

I called 33 the Mirror Year because I saw it as a time of deep reflection and of symmetry and balance, a time to find my footing again. But 10 days after my birthday, another hit came and knocked me back to the ground. News of a serious illness in our family reshaped our lives once more, and 33 became not only a mirror but a skipped record. A needle stuck in its groove, doomed to repeat the same thing over and over, trapping me in its loop. For much of the year, I could not move forward.

So, one-year-ago self, you asked what I was calling this year. I’m calling it the Movement Year, or the Year of the Stride. 34 is a sequence, one number following the other. Here on the 12th day of the month, on my 34th birthday, I take these numbers as a sign: 1 2 3 4. Urging me to go on, not dragging the past like dead weight but letting it float like a flock of balloons at my back. Giving me lift. 1 2 3 4, up and out and across. Marching towards the source, ever drawn on by the loveliness of moss and the sight of purple-pink dawn above the train tracks. Fresh snowfall against a tangle of naked branches, a great horned owl calling out its magic from somewhere within. River rocks striated with fine lines and pocketed for keepsakes. Goldenrod, herons, dusk. Sunlight streaking through a prism in the music room, flinging rainbows against the white walls, bringing color to what will be a nursery someday.

I am not a mother yet. But I have built my lifelines, strong as umbilical cord, tethering me to this land. My scream is a song awakening me to the world again and again. It rises and continues to rise, a Shepherd tone forever ascending. 1 2 3 4.

Onward into the morning.