Judith

      I am lying in bed with Judith. She will give birth sometime tonight. She is 20, and when she smiles it's as if her whole body radiates in a way that gives a gift to everyone. After 5 months of blood clots and complications, tonight her baby will come. She is afraid and delighted. I find pure joy and immense worry laying at her side. Here, I am mother, a husband, a friend. Her belly is round and smooth against my side. I lay my hand there and tell her stories of what I think her child might be like. I sing to her stomach and she laughs, rolling her eyes. Contractions come and her pain squeezes her body tight like a fist. I lay there next to her, my stomach knotted until her body calms. There is a tear on my palm and I cannot tell if it is hers or my own.
       The nurse comes, again. She tells Judith her cervix is dilated 50 millimeters. I don't know how to convert that to centimeters so I just smile and go with the flow. Last night I dreamed I was pregnant and giving birth. I woke in a sweat at 3am and have been up since then. We arrived at the hospital at 9am this morning, its 6pm now and the sun is setting out the window, blue, purple, gold. I close my eyes and drift to sleep, Judith's breath is all I hear. She flails to find comfort and I am jerked awake again. Was that moments or hours?
     Now,  a woman screams from the next room. She is yelling things in swahili that I do not understand. Judith looks at me with worry, and I feel the same. I find music and Erykah Badu sings soothing melodies quietly in the room. Her mother comes in the room and joins us on the bed. The three of us squeezed together on the small single bed, her mother reads out loud from a swahili bible on the table. We flow between moments of seeking peace, dreaded pain, and healing laughter. I show her pictures of my family. "You got old" Judith says to me "your mom is more beautiful than you." I love this kind of unabashed honesty. We re-live the story of me falling down the stairs a few hours ago and this time our tears are from laughter. 
      I think back on all the hours- no, all the days- spent in hospitals the past few months. All the waiting in 8 hour long lines, the emergency late night calls, the pain and worry. It has been a long road from there to here. I have found a strength in these women I never could have imagined. A strength in humanity many of us forget exists. For a moment, she sleeps at my side now and I watch her with the utmost respect, admiration, tenderness and love. We have a long way to go tonight, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. 

Here's to Judith and bringing new life into the world.