the first year.

My baby turned one.  Well, she turned one a month ago. Life with three small kids is joyfully hectic, and I don't always get to reflect on things in a timely manner.  To celebrate her birth, three lovely ladies, who I feel so grateful to call my yoga students, gave me a tree to plant in honor of her birth.  I can't tell you the name of the tree anymore, other than to tell you my students called it a "fairy bell' tree.  Last spring, we planted this tree in honor of our baby girl.  Before we planted the tree, we wrote a little note to mother Earth as a family and planted it with the tree.

The first year of life with a baby has always felt like going underwater to me.  The first six months feel like a lucid dream, a vague reflection of your former life. You are living in the depths of babyland. It's not a bad place to be, really, but it can, at times, be filled with so much chaos and sleeplessness that you feel like you could drown in it.  Around six months, things start to change. You get bouyant.  You head toward the water's surface.  While you are still way out at sea, you can, in the distance, see dry land.  And at about a year (give or take six months) you leave babyland and head for shore, reclaiming some of your former life that was lost while you were out at sea.  You start to feel your legs taking hold, strengthening under you once more.

My baby turned one, and we are now both firmly on dry land.  Like someone who has been lost at sea, I am on my knees kissing the earth.  Working in the garden recently has felt like me reclaiming those pieces of myself that have been lost this past year.  As I was in the garden today, I noticed that the fairy bells are blooming.  We have all come full circle.