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June 2, 2006 ~ The Clay Marble
Friday.
five-and-a-half months and changed so much...
Why is this so hard? To open a text file, to start typing? Sure, I've usually got my hands full with Grove or the dogs or both, but Grove usually takes two naps a day at least an hour in length, and he's generally to sleep in the evening by 8:30. And Monty and Rose usually settle down if everything is quiet. Yes, the times when Grove is sleeping are catch-up time, time to get done all that which never gets done, and I do like to spend those evening hours with Morgan, being a couple and not parents... But a few naps a week and an evening or two to sit down and write wouldn't be that hard to pull off.
And I want it, too. Some time to write, sort my thoughts, and record these memories that I will want to revisit later. But I just can't bring myself...
Imagine a slender-necked bottle with a bunch of marbles inside. The bottle is upside-down, but the marbles are not falling out. Most of them are made of glass, and small enough to fit through the neck, but there is also a huge, rough, clay marble. It is blocking the neck of the bottle. It can't fit through. It blocks all the others.
The clay marble is not refined. It is earthy and kinda ugly next to all the others. Huge in comparison, rough and textured. Complex. Were this clay marble at a dinner party with the other glass marbles, it would belch and laugh loudly and share its frank thoughts. And there is actually something beautiful there in that open emotion and blunt honesty, in that dropping of all social graces, something animal and wild.
The marbles in the bottle are entries in this journal that I haven't written yet. Most of them are glass, so easy to share, not very complex to write, smooth. But there is one issue that I'm aching to write about but having the hardest time sharing. It does not slide right out of the bottle. It is rough, earthy, and complex, kind of animal and wild. It is the clay marble, and it has stopped my bottle up. Before all of those glass marbles can flow out, I need to start whittling at that that clay marble, work it out, let it speak for itself.
The clay marble is, of course, Grove's birth. I've written his birth story out several times in several different ways. None of those drafts have felt right. His birth was complex. It does not share easily. It does not slide through the neck of the bottle, but takes hard work to get out. Kind of like a baby through the birth canal, actually.
It is odd. Giving birth is something that women have done since the beginning of humanity, obviously, a common occurrence. We were, all of us, born, and we have a woman to thank for that. Yet each birth is different from the next, a wholly unique event, one that shakes the participants to their cores.
I broke open that night. I am still broken, even now, nearly half a year later. But I think I'm finally getting to the point where I'm ready to share. Soon. Otherwise life will keep marching on without record, and I'm tired of leaving my moments unwritten. I've got to work that clay marble out of my bottle.
Juliana, obviously the cloth blocks you gave him are a hit!
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