Big, Heavy.

My dear friend Claire's son, Mr. Beckett, or Beauregard as I like to call him, saw a walrus when he was just around one year old. He came home from this life changing visit and felt it his mission in life to 'warn' everyone he saw about this walrus. As soon as he saw you he would look up at you, shyly and yet confident in his message, and say "BIG. HEAVY. WALRUS." He said it in this funny breathy voice, he meant business. And we were warned. Big. Heavy. Walrus. 

This story comes to mind because all around me things are happening that should come with the same warning, "Big. Heavy." These big and heavy moments have been happening one after another for a little over a year, and they are happening mostly to everyone around us. Our big and heavy was our little girl joining us last November, and she was just that, big AND heavy at 10 1/2 lbs and 22 inches long. And heavy as in our lives were never the same...and big in that our hearts had no idea what love was before that day. And let me tell you, we knew how to love, just not this big.

That was our big and heavy, and it was a huge moment. It's been a huge year because of our bean. But, it's our friends and family that have been having the biggest and heaviest moments, the kind that should've come with a warning. And this is a strange feeling. To have it going on around us and not to us. While we have been blissfully enjoying getting pregnant, having a baby, making a home, a lot of people close to us have had major life changing events occur. And it's like, we have been floating along on this first year parents cloud, and have been shoulders to cry on, hands to pat backs, fingers to send uplifting emails, and ears to listen...but we have been just outside, because none of it was happening to us directly, and we were just in la la land. It hit me just recently how big and heavy this last year has been because of two instances in this last week. One being my new coworkers boyfriend is having emergency surgery to remove a mass from his brain. It's just so scary. And a friend of ours had to check in to the hospital because she has been very sick for awhile and nobody knew how to fix her, and she just needed more help. She has a one year old son, and for the most part has been having a similar year to us, except this heavy illness lurking around every corner. Weighing down the daily things. I don't know how to process how hard this would be, how hard this is for her and her family. It's all too big.

And then I thought about it. I looked back over the last year. And I had to sit down, I had to take a deep breath. A close friend lost his mother to cancer, my parents sold their home of 30 years, my sister in law lost both her grandmothers within months of each other. My best friend had a cancer scare. My brother got married. My cousin is going to prison. There were so many babies. So many weddings. People had a whole lot of life happening this year. A big and heavy year for everyone. Not to mention it's an election year, and for many people our basic human rights are on the line. It is all so heavy.

So how do we deal? Like, how do we process all this stuff and laugh and love and giggle? How do we keep things light? Because it seems to me that everyone in my life is doing just that. They are amazing examples of strength and courage. It does take courage to start a family, to say I do. And more importantly it takes strength to lose the most important thing to you and to be able to still make your friends laugh, and to laugh yourself. Is it strange to clump the sad with the happy? The babies with the death? The marriages with separation? Maybe. I think that death and life are equally heavy, one you come out the other end with a heart so full it hurts, and the other can leave a hole so big it hurts. But either way it requires strength and adjustment and the time to figure out how to move forward. With life there is more laughter, and with death more tears. And love is much lighter than hate. But all of these things that have made up the last year, they all are apart of growing, and growing up. We know this, because television and novels teaches us this, when you grow up parents die, and there are weddings, and there are babies, and sickness, and there is sadness and happiness. But you just never think that it will all happen in a short year. That all of the things, all of them, will happen to the people around you all at once. That is big. Heavy.










*there is an unpublished, unfinished, post about my baby girl turning 11 months old floating around. I am hoping to post it before she turns one.