Song of the Cicada

The first hints of this summer's upcoming monsoon season are sneaking their tendrils into our 105 degree days, teasing the college kids with a few hours of higher humidity and cooler temperatures.  The locals know it won't hit full force for a while still, but the first drops of rain our parched desert has drunk in months are quite seductive.  The scent of the moistened creosote is absolutely the smell of the desert - my desert.  The cicadas sing their droning monotony as a few drips of rain patter the warm pavement and the humidity sinks down among us, shrugging itself around our shoulders and stealing away in between flyaway hairs, curling them to our necks and causing perspiration at our temples.  The combination of the water and the hot pavement release rich-smelling minerals out into the air, and every now and again you can catch a cool breeze punctuating the pressing heat of the day.  It's absolutely intoxicating.

Although we've always said we'd like to live somewhere greener, somewhere with real seasons, I know I would miss the desert immeasurably.  I love living here, for all its misgivings.  It's my home, it lives on in my heart and in my dreams and it presses heavily on me tonight, a night following a day of thunder and lightning and slight, sweetly delicious rainfall.

Life as we know it is full of comforting daily expectations, things we've lived with for years.  But life is also full of uncertainty, especially for us or maybe just for me.  This new person about to join us will change so much.  Of course we know that; I know that.  What'll it be like?  Who is she?  Is she going to like me?  Am I going to be good enough for her?  Did we do the right thing?  All questions that most parents have asked themselves while waiting for their children to be born.  Like pregnancy, so many before us have walked this path and yet I find that it doesn't make me feel less ... alone, for lack of a better term.  It feels nearly as if we're the first people ever to travel this journey.  Perhaps that's one of the great miracles of creating life.

Each one of us is so full of magic and hope and promise and miraculousness.  It's incredible that my body functions, my heart beats and my brain fires and my nerves respond and I'm a thinking, breathing, living being.  Yet I don't feel terribly special, on a day to day basis.  My wife is growing my daughter inside her body, and that absolutely amazes me.  She was created from mere cells, and in the last seven months has gone from a tiny cluster of cells to a tiny being, one who already has the beginnings of her personality.  What could be more incredible than a brand new life?

I do feel badly for T.  She is thirty weeks now, and her discomfort seems only to increase by the day.  We've been waiting so long for this, and I only wish it were easier for her.  I wish I could shoulder more of her discomfort, her pain, the little things that annoy her.  I am a fixer, and I can't fix this.  We just have to wait together, fingers entwined, shoulder to shoulder, for Ever.  Forever.  For the present, and for the future, and hope for some wisdom in there somewhere.

I suppose the weather has left me feeling contemplative.  I apologize that this hasn't been a more informative post, though I suspect it is likely indicative of my frame of mind tonight.

I leave you with a picture of T, showing off her new trick as we sit down to have frozen yogurt together.