Kyra Lena is nine months old today.  She can walk when her Papa holds her hands.  She dances to acoustic jams and classic jazz.  She calls out "Mama" when I've been away too long.  She learns from the beat of a drum set to Shel Silverstein's poems.  She laughs when I tell her my dreams.  At bedtime, she pulls her blanket over her head and, with a coo, surrenders to the night.

Nine months ago, I relished the warm water soaking into my skin in a shower stall at the hospital.  My husband washed my hair, and peace was the scent of jojoba oil on his hands, those hands that held me throughout the 39 hours and forty minutes of my drug-free labor, those hands that cradled our child when she had emerged 45 minutes ago.  She was healthy.  And beautiful.

Nine months ago, we took our daughter home to the apartment that my husband built inside his shop for his ex and their son.  Three days later, Kyra Lena went to Atlanta to meet her brother.  Two weeks after that, a spit-up scare sent us to Scottish Rite.  At one month, I was relieved to see her health was fine.  She went camping at the quarry lake where her father and I took the test that originally announced her conception.  At three months, she dipped her feet into a waterfall. 

Nine months ago, I did not know that we'd move into the house my husband built for our family, or that my stepson would start putting the word "mama" in front of my name.  Nine months ago, I did not know that the economy would crash, and budget cuts would result in the elimination of my job.

Today I set a meeting with an investor about the community education center I would like to build in my evolving rural town.  I applied for a scholarship to get an online masters degree in counseling psychology.  I launched my website.  I mapped out a freelance career plan.  I began to outline a novel.  Nine months after my daughter's birth, I have begun breathing life back into myself. 

As I type in the office my husband designed,  he sleeps sweetly on the couch nearby, and our daughter cuddles with a stuffed banana man in her crib. I smile at my thoughts about the future.  There is power in nine months.

 
Kyra Lena at 9 months.