I am forty-two years old. Sometimes, when I am absent-mindedly looking down at my hands, I have a flash-back to my early childhood, when I sat beside my mother on the couch or on the church pew, examining her hands. I noticed the thin, soft skin, the y-shaped blue veins, the wrinkles around her wedding ring and band. Her perfectly manicured nails, her long, beautiful fingers. How many times did those hands reach out to touch me, to soothe, to lift, to bandage, to comfort, the calm, to serve me? They washed my hair, guided me across the street, made me pancakes.
The day I was born, Mama was forty-two years old. She reached out through laughter and tears and held me, and her hands looked just like mine. I was her ninth baby. Her last.
My mother died four years ago. She never got to hold my eighth baby. Her hands will not reach out to embrace me in a few short weeks when I deliver my own ninth child into this world. I feel her absence keenly in this season of preparing for birth again. I miss her loving concern, her knowing and understanding, the way she extended her life out to me as a mother as effortlessly and naturally as breathing. I miss her. But when I glance down at my hands, I am aware that her love and tenderness lives on in me. And somehow, love can hold both the longing and the joy, the sorrow and the beauty of hands and bodies and hearts and hopes that once touched. Our lives are still connected in this—the contour and shape of fingers and thumb, the color and texture of skin, the movement and motion of motherhood.
Somehow, I have inherited my mother’s hands.
Dear friends,
I’m nearing my last month of pregnancy, the waiting, the praying, the preparing for the shift that is about to happen in our lives and in our home. One thought that keeps surprising me over and over is this: this sweet child is already here with us, in our home, sitting here at this table with me right now. He is hidden in the secret place, but all this time, he is already a part of this family and at home here in this house full of noise and chaos and love. I am looking so forward to the moment when we see this baby’s face. And I look forward to sharing the story of this baby’s birth when we get to the other side!
Sending love and the brilliant green points of daffodil leaves breaking through the February ground,
Mackenzie
From the Podcast:
(Originally recorded Sept. 20, 2022) Today I send my most vulnerable and intimate words out into the world, written at moments in my life when grief was shaking me down to the very core. In this chapter of my book, I share about miscarriage and the death of my beautiful mother. These words chronicle the numbing pain of loss, the raw and hollow ache of grief, a hope that life could be beautiful again, refusing fear and regret, and allowing grief to lead me to a place of gratitude. It is my true hope that they will bring some comfort and will be an anchor if you feel tossed about and lost in a sea of grief.
From the Family Archive:
I wrote this song when I was pregnant with Kells, our third child. (This video was recorded shortly before he was born, 12 years ago.)
The womb becomes a world
You are the sole inhabitor
The soul begins to grow
My heart divides and multiplies
It’s a mystery beyond anything
I ever studied in school
It breaks every mathematical rule
Two become one
One becomes three
Three becomes a family
Where love grows exponentially
Three becomes more
A family of four
And we have all been waiting for
Beautiful you
If you didn’t see last week’s post about Resources for a Sacred Everyday Life, paid subscribers (and Patreon members) can now access my 6-week video journaling course, as well as personal journal retreats, printables for creative family culture and more… This is my little library that I hope to add to over the months ahead. It is a small way to say thank you for the support that changes my life.