In Response to the Many Requests for an Update, This is What the Last Month Has Been Like

Making to-do lists that expand and contract with their own life force. Tidying the front porch. Scrubbing the kitchen. Reorganizing the bookshelves. Sorting through old clothes. Surreptitiously parting with household junk in the dumpster behind the old bread factory that now houses your office. Needing work and rituals that will prepare your mind and body for her arrival. Learning that the tight and tender spot on your belly some afternoons is a contraction. Feeling extremely uncomfortable in childbirth class as your teacher acts out her own interpretation of a contraction and wanting her to stop moaning almost as badly as if you were having the contraction yourself. Swimming laps at the pool to stay strong; doing the same, meditative stroke, stroke, stroke breathe for lap after lap and watching the liquid veins of sunlight move across the pool floor as you go. Walking home in the shade on the same route each time, to see: the fig tree, the blue house with the giant rocking chair, the lost cat poster on the telephone pole, the slow trickle of Waller Creek. Laying down on the table to listen to your baby's heartbeat, always the same steady rhythm, the nurse saying the same number with a smile. Watching the doctor stretch her tape measurer across your belly. Drawing circles on the legal pad next to your computer at work and marking each spot where you feel a flutter, push, or squirm throughout the day. Feeling disconnected from life in a divine sort of way. Not being able to handle small and earthly things like remembering where your glasses are or that you're supposed to go visit the hospital or how to make Mark Bittman's pancake recipe or to take the things you've paid for at the coffee shop. Realizing the reason the dog always unmakes the bed after you leave for work is that it's his way of rebelling against losing his spot there at night, which you've trained him for in case the baby is sleeping with you. Wrapping your husband's birthday presents early and leaving them on the sewing table to gently torture him with anticipation. Remembering you were going to go to Jane Cohen's house in Umbria this summer when you see your copy of Let's Go Western Europe on the high bookshelf your husband built to make more room for the baby. Coming home from a walk to find that your cat has dismantled the knitting project you've been working on for your sister-in-law, and not being able to be mad at her because she is tiny and fuzzy and nearly blind.