-Vaclav Havel
Playwright and former Czechoslovakian President
This quote from Vaclav Havel means a lot to me these days as I try to ready myself for the adventure of adding a second child to our family. Like any expectant parent, there are loads of thoughts, fears and anxieties swirling around in the nether regions of my subconscious. I'm sure it's exacerbated by the fact that our fist child was born with special needs, so we have absolutely reconciled with the possibility of that happening again as we realize that anything is possible anytime. And besides the basic desire for a healthy child, which we all share, there are millions of other things that run through your mind: Do I have enough energy? Will our resources hold out? Is our marriage strong enough? Will there be any time left over, ever, for me? What if my kids don't even like each other?
Then, the other day, I came across this photo from my friend Hatnim Lee's blog and had this lovely rush of calm and synchronicity. If I have a few down moments here and there, I love to see what she's up to because a) I love her photography and the things she observes and b) it's often like stepping into an alternate universe which totally fascinates me and c) she's always on the go so I feel like I get to live vicariously through her adventures. At any rate, some of her photos looked a tad familiar when I last checked in and I realized they were from a region of Montenegro and Italy that my husband and I visited during our first extended time of travel together soon after our engagement. I've been working on chronicling those weeks and months in a book project for some time, but so often that dream seems far away as I work to keep up with the demands of our family life and a day job. Yet somehow, when I saw this photo of the moon over the Adriatic Sea, and a few photos later shots from the same all night ferry ride we took years ago from Montenegro to Bari, Italy, a rare feeling of peace and continuity set in. I had this sense that all the crazy vignettes that constitute our life together might be connected after all, and there is rhyme and reason to it. That we've been preparing for this journey, like every journey we undertake, every step of the way.
Nothing we do in life is ever fully planned. Nothing I've ever set out to do has turned out the way I expected, especially the big stuff. Soon after we got back from our crazy, fun travels in Italy that fall, my husband was diagnosed with cancer. But it worked out, and six years later, it's still working out. Before the end of my daughter's first year of life, we knew she would never be like other kids. And two years after that, she's still the best thing that ever happened to us. And we persist, and risk, and hope, and just keep doing. Sometimes that feels crazy, and more than a little brutal. Sometimes it feels like magic. More than anything else, though, it just feels right. And I love that Vaclav Havel put words to that feeling, the essence of hope. It's not about things turning out perfect, therefore validating how "right" a thing or decision is all along, but it's about knowing on the deepest level of your being that somehow the risk is worth taking and following that impulse, even if by nothing else than the light of the moon.
Sometimes that's all we have. More often than not, it's enough.
