Sitting at the ASO Hans Zimmer concert with a friend, quietly crying to the theme song from Inception. It’s so beautiful. I remember the first time I watched that movie, thinking of my friend Leanne who had died, and feeling that she was so close by, just in the next room. That god was only a dream away, was just waking up. I wept then too.

Nightingale and I are expecting another baby. Our last little one, the fifth child in our little patchwork family. We’re halfway through the pregnancy, and while Nightingale has been brutally unwell, the baby is healthy. Much loved, much anticipated. My world, which was once so lonely, is now woven tightly with my family, my children, and my work. Solitude is rare, I am the gardener tending all the growing things, aching in the moonlight and resting when I can in the summer heat.

We’re back in the world of hospitals and white water rafting through medical trauma. I remember you being born, Bear; I remember cutting his cord. I remember how hungry I was to hold him, how my skin ached when he cried. The memories are like dreams, hazy and unclear. Underwater in a sea of trauma. I remember stuffing the scream back down inside me, my fingers twisting my fingers into knots, crying in therapy until I couldn’t breathe. Those memories are sharp and clear as glass. 

I remember you too, Poppy, birthed into water in the dim light. I remember you falling asleep on my chest, night after night, pacing the driveway with you in a carrier, held close to my heart. I remember the frozen wordless terror left in my flesh.

It’s exhausting to have children at 40. And yet, my capacity is greater than it has been at any time since I was 18. This is my window, our last window, to bring these beloved children into the world. And while this baby is our last baby, it will not be the last. There will always be other children needing love, food, or a spare bed. There will be strays and grandchildren and friends of friends we take in and take on and love. We are lucky that way.

Holding the dream of the last child with so much love and anticipation. With worry about our housing, about more months of sleeplessness, about money and energy and weaving a new relationship into the family with each of the other kids. We are preparing more this time, building a team, asking the hard questions now, and making time to unpack the wounds. It’s a different kind of nesting to the first child. There are so many beautiful memories and so many dark ones. Tam and Luna float about us, light as moths, brief as butterflies.

We’ll do our best by you, littlest love. You have such a beautiful, imperfect, loving family waiting to welcome you. We have been so lucky in these dreams, and the moments blur together and become mundane and ordinary.

Then some artist fills the world with such beauty and sorrow and grandeur. And I remember the first time Bear gazed into my eyes when I was rocking him to sleep and how deeply moved I was. I remember Star resting her head on my shoulder in the hospital after her knee was torn. I remember getting ice cream with Nemo and debriefing a difficult appointment. I remember bathing Poppy in the backyard under the beautiful old tree. All these moments become framed in something that elevates them from the everyday. I sit in the dark theatre, weeping and grateful I have a heart that can still be moved. Grateful for these precious dreams and memories among the dark seas and storms. One day soon we’ll meet you too, little one. Hold on and keep holding on. We love you.