Many Hands
“The waters, they will change your life” echoes in my mind as I remember a pointed, prophetic dream I had when I was 7 about the waters of San Francisco Bay. I had never been to the Bay Area and the dream, for decades, would turn up now and then as an odd token of my childhood.
I vividly remember walking out of an adoption attorney’s office in late August 2018, desensitized after the 6 years of repeated trauma and 6 miscarriages. I stopped at the pharmacy to fill a prescription request for birth control and ultimately decided, patch in hand, to wait for the end of my next period to apply. I went on to book a one-way escape flight to San Francisco for 2 weeks, driving back home by way of National Parks with my sister.
This was my “let it go” moment — where you finally put your hands to rest and wait with a hopeful heart for them to be held. It is in this moment of vulnerability that you lay to rest the sense that you, and you alone, control anything; let alone the notion that you ever–or will ever–fully understand anything. In these emptied moments that look and feel like defeat are precisely where the hardest battles are fought and won. It is in these emptied moments we lay unexpectedly expectant.
I landed in San Francisco on Thursday, October 4, 2018.
Our first stop that day was Baker Beach, the perfect shoreside spot to enjoy the Golden Gate Bridge without crowds. I slipped my shoes off, walked along the wave caressed shores, allowing my feet to be submerged in the icy October water. We took pictures, marveled at the nudists, and enjoyed our bayside afternoon topped off with a stroll through Muir Woods. In the car on the way to our AirBnB, the pain started — surely, it was my period and we stopped for pads and Tylenol.
It wouldn’t be long.
By October 15, 2018, I was sitting in Austin, TX., positive pregnancy test in hand and no surety of the future.
Writing this and twisting the rose ring on my hand, I ask her, as I have many times: “this was you wasn’t it? When I asked you to care for our baby until it was time, you did just that. He remembers you. And, I love you. We love you.” I contemplate my son’s fascination with his great grandmother, a woman who passed away 6 years before he made his way to our arms, and I arrive at the notion that we never forget the arms that held us.
That trip was a defining time for me. Ansel Adams, my sweet boy’s namesake, is quoted saying “in wisdom gathered over time, I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.” My very being changed over those 2 weeks and those experiences paved a path of self exploration that has yet to let up.
This journey has taught me that every experience in life is a necessary one. I full-heartedly believe that harnessing pain, suffering, joy, and anxiety allows for not just personal growth but provides an avenue to develop a micro to macro perspective of your life. Ansel Adams sums this up quite succinctly: “I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.”
May (my) Ansel always know he has my heart, how loved he is, how wanted he was, and how I will always be a life’s constant for him. One last Ansel Adams quote sums up my future hopes for my sweet boy:
“Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.”
