Release

It's raining outside.  Or pouring, I guess.

I can hear the drops on the metal roof of our deck.  I can hear them slapping the pavement and bouncing off the windows. 

Something about that sound soothes me like nothing else can.  It makes me breathe slower.  My eyes relax...sometimes I close them, the tension in my shoulders and back melt away, and I find myself pausing everything else to soak it all in.  If it starts raining...hard like that...while I am teaching, I stop.  And I ask the kids to stop and just listen.  "Listen guys...do you hear the rain on the roof?  That is my favorite sound in the whole world." Even now as I write, I am stopping every sentence or two to stare out into the gray.

I guess it's my equivalent of stopping to smell the roses.

I don't know why I like it so much.  Maybe because I can relate to the gray clouds who have just gotten too heavy and have to let all that rain come pouring down.

There is something freeing about falling water.

....................................

I've been so happy lately that I am surprised at how much tension is being released by the rain.  Tension that I didn't realize was getting so heavy.  I thought I was doing a pretty good job of staying positive...and I guess I still think I am. Really, I AM VERY HAPPY!  But I also think the hope-let down-despair cycle of infertility has become so ingrained in me that, on some level, I am bracing myself for the let-down.  The scars of infertility don't just disappear with pregnancy.  And my lessons in surrendering control continue.  Seeing a little dot and a heartbeat tomorrow should be reassuring.