Harp beat

He chose the grey funnel shaped piece. The one usually reserved as a “speedy booster” for the building of jets and rockets. A very valuable piece. Fought over often, not easily won. Treasured.

He turned it this way and that, brow furrowed in concentration, lower lip slightly pouted, looking so very much like his father it makes my heart clench a bit. He holds a bit of twine in his other hand. I am still not sure how he managed to find the ball of twine and cut an appropriate length without my help (or knowledge of his doing so). I watch him unite the two pieces. Triumph written on his face.

He brings me his creation.

A fetal doppler.

A piece of equipment we are quite familiar with...

Beginning with his own gestation, when I decided to educate myself and learn about what a birth managed by my own body could mean.

After that redeeming moment when he slid out from me, all blue from the water, those red red lips pursed in a grumpy pout, the greatest victory I have ever felt, that moment always brought vividly to mind when words like “fetal doppler” and “midwife” and “homebirth” are spoken or read.

Now here he stands, holding that home made doppler and gazing at my roundness.

His hands begin searching out his unborn brother, feeling gently around my abdomen. Checking up on his Mama and baby brother. Asking questions. Measuring. Answering my questions.

Since the day we announced our pregnancy, he asks at least four or five times a day, “Is the baby ok in your belly?”

He wants to know what he cannot see.

He wants to be a part of something he knows is special and secret.

He loves a good secret.

I speak those words, “You knit me in my mother’s womb, in the most secret of places.”

He nods, blue eyes growing wider, small hands spreading out over my abdomen. Small lips kissing my stretched skin, fluttering across the deeply etched lines that prove I carried him as well.

He moves his nose closer to my belly button and begins whispering to his brother.

More secrets.

The baby moves the minute he hears that familiar voice. Pushes up hard, turns his body, lands a sharp kick.

Interaction.

Relationship.

Understanding.

Brotherhood.

I close my eyes and think of those that were scraped out of their mother’s wombs. Eviscerated. Mangled. Torn to pieces. Murdered.

What deep deep grief over what we have imagined ourselves sovereign over.

What will my son say on the day he learns that we do such things?

Will he remember these quiet moments? When he pads into my room, footed pajamas brushing the floor with that oh so familiar brush brush brush. The first beams of sunshine streaking in through the glass. Curling into my side, fitting up against me, his hands searching for his brother. Finding that exact spot that his baby brother loves to curl up in, he always seems to know which side the baby favors, he presses his hands deep.

We look at each other and he always says the same thing--

“Mom. I can feel his little harp. Its beating on my hands.”

Will he remember this?

Lord let it be so.

In the meantime, I know one piece of building material the boys will never see again. Once their brother is born that small funnel shaped building block with its tattered twine will be wrapped up and stored in my memory box. A most precious treasure, a memory of when two brothers forged their relationship before they ever set eyes on one another.