Sunday March 27, 2022
Dear Baby,
I’m sitting in the central plaza of Estella, Spain watching two groups of boys play two different soccer games. One of the boys has a green plastic whistle he doesn’t hesitate to use when he thinks someone has committed a fowl.
You and I have been walking for seven days now through the Spanish countryside. During that time, we’ve completed the first five of the 33 stages of the Camino de Santiago Frances. We have been blessed with incredibly mild, beautiful weather along with the glorious flowers of the Spanish spring.
As I’ve been walking, I’ve been thinking a lot about the world, both the one we live in now and the one you will get to live and grow old in. Catholic pilgrims have been walking this 500-mile path for nearly a thousand years, making their way from all across Europe to Santiago de Compostela. The route is scattered with ancient ruins, old churches, and beautiful stone bridges that have born witness to hundreds of years of history.
Walking the Camino de Santiago in springtime, it’s easy to forgot about the world’s problems. The sun shines, the flowers bloom, the breeze blows, the trees sway. Yesterday, I watched a foal nuzzle up to her mother to nurse, and I felt a pang of joy thinking of the first days, weeks, and months you and I will get to spend together after you are born.
Yet, even Camino becomes a projection of the troubles facing the world. “A new world order is coming,” says the graffiti on one waymarker. “The people will decide,” says another. “Go home occupying forces” is scrawled in big black letters inside a pedestrian underpass. The world is still struggling with the fallout of a global pandemic. Even here on the Camino, the signs of economic instability can be felt and seen in the closed restaurants and properties for sale, in the graffitied abandoned buildings and the homeless people begging for money on the streets of Pamplona. For the first time in nearly 100 years, a major world power has declared war on his neighbor and the democracies of the world are rallying against the threat of autocracy. If life is in fact a multi-level multi-player game, this is definitely a challenge round. We humans are being pushed to consider what exactly it means to be human, as individuals and as a collective.
As the structures of society seem to fray under the pressure of excessive force, the Earth is also showing us her vulnerability. While cycles of climate change have been underway for eons (far longer than we’ve been here!) human activity is accelerating global warming and it’s not clear exactly whether we’re going to get our act together to do something about it. Here in Europe, the motivation is definitely greater. The packaging on food has changed and publicly accessible recycling points are everywhere, even in the tiniest villages. But recycling our bottles and cans won’t brings us back from the damage we’ve done. It seems that at the same time we are being pushed to consider how to exercise our common humanity, we are also being called to consider how we will live as stewards of the planet we have been gifted. Watching the farmers of northern Spain prepare their land for planting and tend to their livestock, it occurs to me that we might all be a bit healthier and happier if we lived closer to the land. The last two decades of explosive globalization have made the countries of the world interdependent in ways we never could have imagined, which many would argue has accelerated economic growth. But it’s also fed excessive consumption, which has come with a cost to the planet. Perhaps it’s time for us to become a little more essentialist in what we grow and eat and otherwise consume.
When I first considered the idea of becoming a mother in my twenties, I didn’t imagine bringing a child into a world quite as fraught as this one. And yet even seven years ago, when I first was pregnant (that time by accident), the overwhelming uncertainty of so many things led me to terminate my pregnancy. That’s a longer discussion for another day, but state of crisis of our economic, ecological, and societal systems didn’t materialize overnight. It’s been building for some time now. It seems like people are almost ready to really do something about changing it. Almost.
At the same time that I am meditating on the state of the world, I am also thinking a lot about you. In spite of rampant economic inequality, rising inflation, and the impending threat of World War III, your dad and I knew we wanted to have a child together. And we are so excited to meet you. As I walk, I am thinking about the kind of child you will be. What kind of person will you become? What traits will you learn from me? Which will you take from your dad? And which parts of you will be uniquely yours? As a baby in my belly, I can only say that you’ve been fabulous. I feel so blessed that my pregnancy with you has been low risk and easy. At the same time, I can sense already that you’ll be an active child. Often, as I walk I feel your little foot tap-tap-tapping just beside my right floating rib and I think, he’s going to be a dancing baby for sure.
Often women don’t get to take time off until they give birth, unless they have a health reason to do so. But I feel so blessed to be able to spend this time with you, getting attuned to your patterns and rhythms and anticipating your entry into the world (which, God willing, will stay on schedule and allow us to finish this journey without having to make an emergency exit to a Spanish maternity ward!). I know that being your mom will change my life forever. And I am excited to experience all the ways that will be true.
When you get older, you’ll get to tell the story of this journey you took in my belly just before you were born. It’s one I‘ve been thinking about for a long time, a journey I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take, at least not until I was much older. When I found out I was pregnant with you, it somehow crystallized that this was the time.
When people realize I’m pregnant and walking el Camino by myself, they say, “Valiente!” — courageous. There were plenty of reasons to stay home and not take this trip now. But if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that life on Earth is short and opportunities are fleeting. Carpe diem—seize the day. But it’s easier said than done. Sometimes seizing opportunity demands that we look doubt and skepticism in the eye and do it anyway. Sometimes it asks us to accept risk and hold onto faith that things will work out the way they’re meant to. I hope that when it comes to following your dreams, this part of your origin story will help you find the strength to be courageous, too.
There are still five weeks of walking ahead of us, and already my feet are very sore. I am almost certain I’ll have to walk slower than I planned and hoped. But I’m taking it one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, enjoying this time that we have together, opening myself to the wisdom and direction that God’s plan has in store.
Wonderful. That ancient bridge says a lot. Thanks for letting us all walk along with the two of you.