just before.

the first day of the year was many days in one, but mostly it was a day we spent together: papa working in the kitchen (filling bowls with chili to warm our bellies and our freezer with extras to pull out in deep winter months when we're too taken with a tiny dove to think ahead to supper), mama writing in journals and nesting in baby's room (sorting clothing and folding blankets and spinning a mobile of swans and admiring things soft and delicate, things that will make baby's childhood magical, a world all her or his own).

this new year began with a thankful heart:

thank you for this baby growing healthy and spirited, and for my strong, capable body. thank you for another year of loving my christopher and our people. thank you for days ahead — days at home, raising this baby, going through the good and the hard, with a tribe only a text or call away. thank you for the rocking chair in the corner that makes me smile. thank you for the pure, selfess love of a husband who does our laundry so i can rest and does our cooking so i can write — who gives of himself so fully, that i might spend time with my thoughts and this nine month belly, before all that comes next.

and this new year began with a humble plea:

please deliver this baby safely to our arms. please bring my christopher safely home to us every day. please keep our dear ones healthy and safe. please let me be and give the best of myself, most especially to my two and the four walls of our home. 

and so i greet this new year, these waiting days, with eyes turned heavenward and palms turned up. this is a month for rest. i will sip fizzy martinelli's and spend time with baby's journal. i will write love letters to my husband and thank you notes to family and friends. i will wash baby's clothing and pack our hospital bag. i will take long walks, stretching my legs and my back, preparing for the journey ahead. i will assemble playlists, spangled with peter broderick and ólafur arnalds, for cozy winter days ahead. i will diffuse essential tree oils into the air we breathe and fill our freezer with bone broth. i will read books that fill my cup and nap when i am able and relax into steamy baths at the end of cold days. i will continue spinning music (bach, mozart, romantic cello and violin) and reading aloud (frost, eliot, woolf, stevens), in earnest hopes that our home feels familiar to baby from the very day he or she joins us here.

this month is a living prayer. this month is the very thing i need.

2017.

in our home, this was the year of twenty nine and thirty, one year married, three years together. of going west in summer and south in spring and autumn. of celebrating each of my grandfathers' lives. of road trips (d.c. to see the cherry blossoms, lake george on a summer day, virginia in october). of the women's march and writing to representatives and a new job. of devotchka on the bowery. of spain and morocco and iceland. of bidding farewell to our treehouse and opening a new chapter thirteen blocks south. of continuing beloved traditions (boys' monthly dinner, girls' weekend, twelve dates of christmas). of welcoming a niece and sending a brother off to peace corps senegal. of gathering knits, building a crib, making a nursery, dreaming big dreams.

we strengthened and deepened relationships with family, friends, each other. we delighted in daily, small joys. we gave thanks for health and adventure, for it's especially important to practice gratitude when things are good.

we grew a baby. a sweet, spirited creature traveling down to us from perfect, eternal stardust.

i have gone 'round and 'round gathering thoughts on what this year has been, has meant, where we've gone, where we're going, and i am closing twenty seventeen with deepest gratitude and brightest hope. this is where i begin again — here, now, with them.

may tomorrow bring the sweetest year that's ever been, for every last one of us. tender and deep, peaceful and safe, full of things wished for, things prayed for, things willed, things desired.