la vie en rose

I am officially overdue. It's okay. My biggest concern (for myself anyway) is that now she's just getting bigger and bigger and it's going to make my job harder and harder. But I've had such an easy pregnancy, so what did I expect? Today is my 1st official day of midwife-ordered "bed rest," meaning that I'm not at work, but I still have lots of things around the house that I want to get done. The funny thing is I keep cleaning the bathroom (or whatever) thinking, "I'll want to come home after having a baby to a clean bathroom (or whatever)." And then another couple days go by and nothing has happened and I have to clean the bathroom again. Or we'll go to the grocery store to get food for the birth, and then we eat it all and have to go back again and get the same foods.

I've been thinking about birthdays lately and why it is that this little one will have to come on 1 day vs. another. My sister feels really strongly about the timing of births and why they happen when they do - her twins were late and her youngest was very early. And she doesn't yet know (or may never know) why those kids were born on those particular days - it just had to be that way. I've been thinking about one of my birthdays, my 16th, as one of those little reasons why having a certain birth date makes all the difference.

We moved to Spokane the day after my 15th birthday party, unloading the truck on Christmas Day. I had a hard time adjusting my freshman year, but after Girls Camp that summer and being in classes with people my own age (Utah's schools had put me ahead in science and I was just naturally awesome at math, so I was the only freshman in all of my classes except English) I felt like my sophomore year was going really well. But then Christmastime rolled around and I was feeling a down. I missed my friends in Utah and I hadn't been able to go visit them in months. My birthday that year was the last day of school before Christmas break and even though I was wearing my new birthday outfit (which I get every year) and everyone else was having fun, I just sat in the lunchroom that day feeling sorry for myself.

I don't know how I was friends with Rosco from the Boys' Ranch. He wasn't in any of my classes, I don't think, but I do seem to remember that he was friends with everybody, so I guess that included me. On the last day of class it was tradition for the teachers to eat in the lunchroom, serenaded by the Strolling Strings orchestra. Someone told Rosco it was my birthday and so he asked me to dance. It was his birthday too, he said. And so we waltzed around the lunchroom, laughing and tripping over each other.

It was one of those moments that only lasted for a couple minutes. But more than 10 years later I still remember it. And to think, if I had been born on the 17th or the 19th it wouldn't have happened. So if being born on the 7th or the 12th or whatever could potentially mean the same thing to my daughter, well, then I can wait.