September 29, 2025

Oh child, I LOVED being pregnant. It was the first War, everyone was half crazed. Seemed like all the boys was clogged in the trenches, never knew if they was coming back. Or in what brokedown vestiges of manhood even if they did. Women folk was working in factories churning products for the war machine. Such men as remained behind–Lordie, they were hungrier than starving alley cats.

I didn’t say then, but it was a traveling musician. Hopping freight trains, busking for nickels and pennies. He asked me to go with him, swap my dusty corner for the open road. I said, Mama comes first. He dropped back in, never knew when he might blow through like some seasonal twister.

He weren’t no different from them sore sorry shades passing by with tin cups or just some dirty rag. But to me, he was Grace dropping tourmaline studded curtains over our life.

Mama suspected. But she was also under his spell. He was the only rainbow in an otherwise flat, dull, gray, exhausted backwater.

She gave him the hay mow. He set up in the barn,.Played and played, sang and sang—sometimes from sun-up to bedtime, audience or no.
He was careful to play songs that didn’t fret the horses.

Mama loved The Tennessee Waltz, Will the Circle Be UnBroken and Wildwood Flower. She made him play them over and over. He would sweep her into the cradle of his sturdy arms, and swing her ’round and ’round. She would shriek, trying to make him stop ,but was laughing too hard. It’d been lifetimes since anyone swooped her into a dancing stupor.

We loved our barn loft. When we were alone, he danced me silently all over the well-worn floor. We fashioned a nest under an opening where we could watch the falling stars. He told me about his wanderings, I let him feel Slonko kicking in my belly. His eyes would glaze over every time, and he would say softly in Polish ciężarna mama jest świętą matką. I memorized it, and repeated it over and over after he left. Later our Polish neighbor Piotr told me it means, ‘a pregnant mama is the holy mother.’ Sometimes my man-boy, he would feel the baby kick and start to cry softly.

Saints alive hollerin’ glory, child! My beautiful bulging belly! I felt like the holiest of the holies come to life and taken up lodging. I felt more beautiful than any woman alive. No girl before me could have felt more magicalized. Magicalized, that’s what I called how I felt. Exalted, made holy. No longer sharecropper, no longer poor white debris. No longer poor nothin’!

Preacher talked about time immemorial. Lying in the fields at night, my belly felt the radiance of all growing life. In innumerable woman folk in countless lands, circumstances, and generations. Giving refuge to their secret gift from the All-Sacred. Each mama’s womb a miracle, each feeling chosen like no other. Unconquerable, insulated from harm. Swollen with confidence, reckless with blessing. Like the pearl-dripped queen or gold empress or some such.

My blood on fire wanted to light bonfires. My skin was rosy-bright, tingled and felt like softest silk. My sweat smelled like jamine. My limbs pulsed with–well, joy ! Unsummoned, undeserved. Like a star of blessing fell right out of the sky and into my heart. Its light shone day and night. Like the Good Book says, on good and foul alike.

My heart spilled over with love for anything and everything. It’s a wonder I didn’t have to fight off those sorry men starved for affection. But everybody wanted to take care of me. Seeing me, they instantly softened.

Being with child is holiness. Them vicious blood suckers who degrade women, them’s just jealous. The mystery of creation eludes them.

At night I would lie in whatever position was comfortable and sing to the unborn little one, the songs his daddy taught me. The beautiful hymns and songs from the old country, the love songs and healing songs and songs for grief and death. I hummed them or sang snatches of words in Polish I didn’t understand. No wonder thenceforth our house was always full of music. Our young’uns played on makeshift noise makers and instruments they made they-selves.

I whispered his name over and over to our son growing inside me. I said how much he loved us and how lucky we was. How he was the wind, and we was the fields, and they needed each other. How all them places he sang, he sowed blessings. Of music, and beauty, and love for us–wherever we was, whatever we was doing. How his music was the seed, and the big world was the soil. How the music he sang could travel anywhere.