Some Small, Some Momentous, All Significant

Hello, Friends! You have my gratitude for your patience while I took the month of April away from this space, and my appreciation for being here today to read the long form reflection that I composed last month, in advance of my break.

Since I last wrote here, I have welcomed a little one into the world (!) and am blown away by the tidal wave of emotions that accompanies such a meeting: big-as-the-sea love, sky high bewilderment, otherworldly awe, and a deep sense that becoming (whether it be a new human being in this world, a parent, or a new-to-you version of yourself) is full of joy, uncertainty, and a hearty dose of doing the best you can despite feeling like you are failing in a myriad of ways, whatever that means for you in the moment.

I took quite a bit of time to consider whether I was going to share the news about a little one here on Substack, since it feels incredibly intimate, and because I don’t plan to ever share any photographs or personal information about them on social media. After a good deal of reflection (and after meeting my little one in April) I finally came to the conclusion that hiding the fact that I now have a wee one feels like cutting off this now essential piece of myself, and with it, forbidding creative exploration of this vast emotional landscape that I now find myself wandering around in.

Building walls between this new chapter and the way that it is asking to have a seat at the table of my writing and creativity practices started off as inconvenient in the fall and this spring feels impossible and stifling. In holding back in my writing during the time I was expecting this child, I felt like I met many dead ends when it came to reflection and poetry. I’d go to write something connected to the experience of expecting life - even tangentially - and then stop. I’d compose a bit, censor myself, edit out any mention of growing a new life, and twist my creativity up in knots trying to walk the line of authentically expressing myself and keeping all traces of this experience to myself.

Writing (and thinking about writing) became a Herculean effort; so much was off limits. Many times I’d feel I’d backed myself into a corner trying to parse through what I “could” say and what I “couldn’t”. It took time to realize that no one was imposing their rules on me; I had built my own moat around the castle. If I could construct such a barrier, couldn’t I also create doorways through which to enter and explore and share with others when I wished to, when it felt right to do so?

Meeting my child feels elemental to the way I am being shaped and reshaped as a human being in this moment. While I feel my core self holding steady as who she has always been until now and while I don’t anticipate my writing to take a markedly different direction because of this new season of my life, I feel grounded in the impulse that it feels vital to share this news and to acknowledge the larger context within which I am currently creating. I look forward to integrating this new experience of mine into this space when it feels organic and meaningful, and appreciate your understanding as I adjust to a new creative rhythm.

On to this week’s reflection, and I look forward to seeing you in this space next week with a new poem.

Minding This Month’s Moon

As I’ve gotten in the habit of doing this year, I make sure to get outside on the first of April to try and glimpse the month’s full moon, called the Pink Moon, Breaking Ice Moon, and Frog moon, among other names.

When I step into the backyard, I quickly see that it is much too cloudy for the Pink Moon to peek through and decide to try again the next evening, since technically, the Pink Moon should still be visible on April 2nd. I still am not treated to a spectacular view, but it feels meaningful to witness nonetheless:

As April spins forward, I feel myself noticing several moments - some small, some momentous, all significant - that feel similar to the moments that I wrote about back in one of my February posts here on Substack. During a season of my life where connecting all the dots together doesn’t feel accessible, I have enjoyed being able to sense small sparks between experiences, both past and present, and continuing to explore this sort of seasonality feels rich right now, so deeper into the forest we go…

*

That Moment

When my dad died on November 3, 2023 after several weeks in the hospital and hospice, I was in Boston, having had my last visit with him a couple of weeks before. When I received the phone call that day that he had taken his last breath earlier that afternoon, I felt as if I had just received word that he had finally embarked on a long planned vacation to somewhere far, far away. It was if he had left for the outer reaches of the universe with no return ticket, and all day (and all the days and weeks following), I felt a visceral sense of him drifting further and further out of my reach. I was helpless to affect the trajectory he was on, and unlike when an earthside loved one embarks on a trip, I had no way of knowing if he had arrived, let alone where he was headed.

As I anticipate the birth of our little one, I feel as though they have been journeying from the outer reaches of the universe and are wending their way back to me - the inverse of how it felt when my dad died and embarked on his journey. Yet, here, now, I feel both my dad and child in a strikingly similar way: familiar as my own heartbeat, all encompassing, close. Perhaps somewhere out in the big dark, my dad and my little one crossed paths; each on their own trajectories, yes, but shedding and sharing starlight as they passed by one another in a place where towards and away are actually not different directions after all.

In more ways than one, waiting for someone to be born is not all that different for waiting for someone to die. I am helpless to affect the trajectory my little one is on, and unlike when an earthside loved one is scheduled to arrive back home from a trip, I have no way of knowing when this child will arrive. There’s no timeline to these kinds of comings and goings, and we are left to lean on rituals (both learned long-ago and just made up by us in the Now) to support us as we make it from moment to moment to moment, unsure of when That Moment is coming.

Now?

Now?

Now?

The suspense can be tortuous, but the idea that That Moment will actually, eventually arrive feels entirely too much for the head and heart to process. Pain and beauty braided into both the arrival and the leaving.

Are we ever as human as we are in our own moments of birth and death? In the meeting of the moments of someone else’s birth and death?

In this waiting, I am reminded of my brilliant and beautiful mentor, Robbie McCauley, with whom I had the joy and privilege of learning from, working for, and collaborating with during my time earning my Master’s degree in Community Engaged Theatre at Emerson College back in the early 2010s. Robbie passed away in 2021 and though this is not her poem, I heard her voice when my dad died and I hear it now, as I anticipate a shift that will delivery our little one into the world:

“Love as brave as first / last breaths.”

You can watch the short video clip here.

Is there anything more daring we will each do during our lifetimes than take that very first inhale, the one before the cry? The air that will fill our lungs long before all the joys, the thorns, the quests we will savor and endure and bask in?

Is there anything more courageous and trusting than take that last breath, the one that comes before we begin our own next journey? The one where we let go of what has been, or at least what we have been conscious for, and consent to melt into the beyond? Or, to return to where it is we came from, before that first breath?

My dad and my little one, both so brave.

Right now, Reader - I invite you:

breathe,

breathe,

breathe.

(brave,

brave,

brave.)

*

Bringing New Life to New Places, a Century Apart

My great-grandmother Guiseppa (a Sicilian form of Josephine) Lauricella arrived in New York City on July 1st, 1912, after spending a couple of weeks on the Atlantic aboard the Martha Washington. Guiseppa had left everything and everyone she knew in Realmonte, Sicily, a small village on the southwest coast of the island, to come to the United States. More specifically, she had arrived with her husband, my great-grandfather Gaetano Lauricella, their eleven year old daughter Giovanna, and their son Salvatore, who had celebrated his fourth birthday aboard the ship in the middle of the ocean, faced with the prospect of creating a life and community from a strange place, with strangers.

What Guiseppa did not yet know is that when her family arrived at Ellis Island and were subjected to health inspections and questioning by immigration officials, she was already carrying her third child, this one to be named James (and the older brother of my Papa Joseph). The story in our family goes that it’s lucky she didn’t know this fact and thus disclose it upon arrival to New York because there was a high likelihood that if she had, she would have been turned away and sent back to Sicily. Where would we be then? Literally?

Seasons circle back, even - especially - from generation to generation. When we moved back from Boston to Upstate New York at the end of the summer of 2025, I, like my great-grandmother, was carrying a little one with me. Unlike her, I knew about the wee one accompanying me over the state line in a van packed with our sweet kitty, snacks, and the remainder of our possessions. Knowledge aside, I never believed that this little one would actually make it through to join us earth side.

In times like these, I am grateful to be proven wrong.

In times like these, my heart is grateful to be creating a life and a community in a place that while it’s not new to me, is novel in a thousand ways that I couldn’t have anticipated.

In times like these, I miss my spiritual home of Boston and likely always will, and I am also learning that I have the capacity to fall in love with the way the sun visits different patches of earth.

The heart stretches in ways we can never see coming, and somehow making room feels less like tumbling around in the dark and more like being held by life itself.

*

Go to the Water

I once saw a wonderful play in Boston, How Much is Enough: Our Values in Question, conceived by the Foundry Theatre out of New York City, that posed live interview questions to members of the audience, offering them the space to answer spontaneously and aloud, and from these responses, wove together a performing arts experience that to this day, remains completely unique for me.

One of the questions that a random man in the audience answered the day I attended was “What would you do if you had one day to live?” He replied that he would spend the day by the ocean with his wife, no hesitation needed. Since hearing this answer, which more often than not, remains my own reply to such a question, I’ve heard many people in my life agree. If they had knowledge that they would only be able to enjoy one more day here on this planet, they would make their way to the water, whether it be river, lake, or sea, and bask in the bigness of it all.

Tonite, (which looking back, turns out to be two sleeps before our little one arrives) as tired as I am, we head to Lake Ontario. I stand on the shore, greedy for the sound and the feel of the rushing, foamy white water, craving the cold that April offers, and searching the horizon for any sign of Canada on the other side. Somehow knowing a distant shore exists but not being able to see it makes it all the more alluring.

I crouch down, which, albeit at two days shy of 40 weeks pregnant, involves some difficulty, and extend my hands into the water as the waves approach. I brought a ceramic heart that fits in the palm of my hand and a favorite rock, worn smooth from the sea, both of which I intend to immerse in the lake, a ritual of my own making in this moment. I plan to bring these talismans of sorts with me to the hospital tomorrow, and my current brand of logic tells me that if I can drench them in Lake Ontario, I can somehow bring with me a sense of connection to this big place, my own vastness within it, as well as my own sense of smallness in relation to it. It’s all comforting right now.

I get too close to the waves and they soak my sneakers. Water weighs something, and I leave the lake with more mass than I arrived with - it makes me feel sturdy and stable.

I put my hands in the water, imagining that I am leaving some of the anxiety and need for control that I carry with me within the waves that rush to my feet. Worry has weight, and I leave the lake a little lighter for trusting the water with what I feel too full to carry any longer.

* As Above, So Below

The lake still present on my skin, I dip outside to look at the night sky from our very own backyard later that evening. Even being fairly close to an Upstate New York city, the heavens glow astoundingly bright here compared to Boston, where I struggled to see past the street lights to the stars beyond.

The expanse of April sky is speckled with constellations and I try to sort out when I last spied Orion’s Belt or the Big Dipper. I needn’t worry; time doesn’t care to withhold present wonder from me. Here they are, now.

With the help of a (ok, I’ll admit it, a digital) star map, we spot Jupiter, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Simple though it sounds, I marvel at the wonders that are planets and stars that are hundreds of millions of miles, if not hundreds of light years, away and that we can still see with our own eyes, our feet planted firmly here on earth. I wonder if my own light might last as long, long after I burn out.

I don’t know how long I have been sitting underneath this sky, but I am aware that it feels like the only place I need and want to be in this moment. For as long as human beings have been alive, we have sat around fires under the stars, our eyes tracing their shapes and patterns etched above. We have shared stories around the fiery circle, stories about where we think we came from, where we believe we go when we die, the fears that have emerged from encounters with wild animals in the woods, and the dreams that visit us when the embers of the heat burn out and we allow ourselves rest under the velvet cloak of sleep.

Babies dream in the womb, I’ve learned. In this moment, I’m simultaneously daydreaming and with any luck, will soon be sleeping, my dreams continuing to unspool, whether I recall them in the morning light or not. My baby, who has been still for some time this evening, is dreaming as well. Of what, I won’t ever know, but the idea of carrying both our dreams inside me in this moment, within one shared body as the night sky sparkles, is sacred.

I realize I haven’t felt the strong kicks of my baby yet this evening. I press my eyes to the stars and speak silently to the one within me whom I know so well and yet have never met, willing them to move. I know it’s not a child’s job to assure their parents that they are ok, and this is not a habit I want to start now. Yet my prayer persists: move, please move. Let me know that you are ok in there. Please?

I do my best to distract myself from the array of catastrophes with the feast of the night sky but feel an undercurrent of unease underscoring the beauty above.

Then, under the warmth of my hand resting on my belly, my little one shifts. I feel a foot float across the sphere of my stomach, soft but sure. Thank you, I say to the stars, to the streetlights that glow low up the street, to the subtle symphony of spring peepers in the distance.

Here under the stars but tucked deep within my muscles and skin and self, this wee one is both a deep sea diver (held in a sea of amniotic fluid) and an aeronaut of sorts (floating, exploring), already in contact with the roaring height of the celestial ceiling above my own head and the depths of the lake I paid homage to earlier in the day. It occurs to me that perhaps each one of us, though already born, still walks the line between these two callings.

Sometimes a feeling of safety doesn’t come so easily, and I am well aware of the privilege it is to feel soothed by such subtle swishes of movement from within. So much is unknown and I know I’ll panic again at some point (many points) in the future. For tonite, I gratefully accept the small peace gifted to me.