The Orchestrations of Life

The grass in our backyard was a blanket against our backs and a pillow to our heads. We gazed up at the sky finding shapes in the overhead clouds that were blooming in ever changing organic shapes as we searched for the familiar within them.

“That one looks like an elephant,” James pointed out with a skinny can of hard lemonade seltzer in hand.

I looked at the cloud my fiancé pointed to, eyes searching for the shape of an elephant trunk or contours of a bulbous animal-like body. “I see it,” I said as I took a quick swig of strawberry lemonade seltzer. The sweet taste spread against my taste buds as the buzz of alcohol flowed through my veins.

It was finally feeling like spring in late April. That evening was comfortable, though it began with dark clouds overtaking the blue sky, threatening to pour down rain or even present a storm. The bad weather seemed to skip town as we watched as the dark clouds raced away against the horizon before James laid back onto the grass. He was barefoot, his pale skin contrasted against the green strands, his brown hair fanned out as he looked at the sky declaring that he wanted to enjoy the moment. We were drinking that evening after a long day of work. We laid against the grass of our backyard with ease as it neared late seven. Our dog, Wolfie, nestled close to us, enjoying the comfortable weather also.

I stared at the everchanging sky. Wisps of white cotton gave way to spots of cerulean. In the distance the sun was shining casting hues against billowy cottony shapes. I basked in the peace alongside my little family, staring above the rooftops of our neighbors and our little cape cod.

Far above trickled a silver disk-like object out of a cumulus cloud. It was unlike the usual planes that I saw in the sky. The object traveled in a linear fashion as it orbited diagonally.

“Do you see that?” I asked suddenly sitting up as I pointed up in the sky at the dot floating above us. “It’s a UFO.”

“No, I didn’t see a thing,” James responded. He was staring up at the same sky I was.

I watched as the object traveled through the sky. As quick as it appeared it tucked itself back into another thick cloud disappearing from view. I felt adrenaline rush through my veins.

I was shocked. A feeling of uncertainty overcame me, and fear overtook the previous feelings of awe. It was instantly sobering. I didn’t want to seem crazy as if I had been hallucinating. I believed in aliens as I was sure there was other life out there besides humans, but I had never thought I would see a flying saucer.

-

That had been around the time we had been “trying” for a baby. I had come down with baby fever, eagerly wanting a child that was my own. It seemed like the only plausible thing that came next as James and I were set to be married that next month. So that evening as we returned inside our house, I couldn’t help but feel that the UFO had been a promising sign for me personally.

It wasn’t until April peeled away for the even warmer weather of May that I got my positive pregnancy test. It had been a shock. I had quickly stepped into the shower one Saturday morning after balancing over the toilet in the bathroom, soaking the applicator of a cheap pregnancy test with urine. I had capped it and instantly felt dread, yet excitement. Almost six months before I had gotten a negative when I had felt strange, so I didn’t have a lot of hope.

But after drying off and quickly getting dressed I saw that there was a second fuchsia colored line parallel to the control one. At that moment I was happy, but at the same time it scared the shit out of me because it was tangible. It was reality. It wasn’t just me wishing for something. That wish had come to fruition. I was actually going to become a mother, which was a position in life that felt so foreign to me even at twenty-six years old when I barely felt like an adult.

The weeks passed by with extreme fatigue and nausea. In the midst of morning sickness was the pains of a life growing inside of my womb. Mentally it was challenging. I was struggling to get used to the changes of my body as a first-time mother. I also struggled with the guilt of feeling tired constantly, along with the feeling of being a failure mixed in with the lingering worry of possibly miscarrying.

Four weeks turned into eight and then we saw our tiny baby on the sonogram screen, and we heard our baby’s heartbeat which made everything seem real.

The wait to the twenty-week ultrasound was even harder. While the threat of miscarriage decreased, I was impatient with wanting to feel my baby’s first movements and learning the gender. My side of the family hoped it would be a girl, but I felt different.

“I dreamt that you came to visit me with a little girl,” my mother told me over the phone one evening. I was quiet, unsure of what to say. James and I were hoping for a boy. My husband wanted a boy for obvious reasons of connecting better with a son, while I wanted a son for different reasons.

Precognition.

“Mama was there too,” she added in to fill in my silence, her excited country twang lingered in my right ear as I held my cell phone close and left hand splayed against my small belly bump.

“Oh really?” I tried to mask my disappointment with surprise at the mention of my grandmother, but it fell short.

I believed in dream symbolism. Maybe the little one inside of me was a girl. Still, I was disappointed and had to persuade myself to accept the possibility. But something lingered inside my head where I knew I would be having a son.

It was a dream.

-

Three years after my grandmother’s death I had a dream that she was shrouded in sunlight underneath a pear tree. She was dressed in a creamy white ensemble that was embroidered with intricate goldwork at the edges and the colors radiated amongst the yellow golds of her tanned skin. On her face was a smile in between the emerald leaves and sparkling teardrop shaped pear fruits she loved were plentiful and looked as if they would burst. Not a single gray strand was found in her dark curly hair that was cornrowed back into a large bun behind her head. She looked beautiful.

As I neared her in the warmth of the dream world, I realized she held hands with a small boy. He was around the age of a toddler, still so small, but in his smile was strength and a warmness that touched my heart. He was dressed similarly to my grandmother in white and delicate goldwork.

“Together forever and never to part, together forever we two,” the boy sang. His childlike voice erupted into the air. His golden-brown hair spiraled down in curls, and his eyes were the kindest shade of deep innocent brown. “And don't you know...”

I laughed as the boy’s hand disappeared from my grandmother’s and he ran to me. I stooped down and embraced him into a hug. All I could feel was an overwhelming sensation of love as the light surrounded us enveloping us whole.

“I would move heaven and earth, to be together forever with you.” *

-

I was twenty when I had that dream. I had instantly recorded it in my journal when I awoke that morning with shaking hands. For some reason, I knew the little boy from my dream had been my son even though it hadn’t been explicitly implied. There was something within my spirit had gotten the connection. My grandmother had always been connected to the spiritual world during her life and after her death there had been a great absence in our family. Her presence was a void no one else could fill. That was just how special my grandmother was.

I dreamt about her after her death like everyone else, but those dreams had been brief as if she were saying that she was okay, or just checking in with me. No dream had hit me like the one with my son because I had always wished that she would be around to see her great grandchild. She hadn’t made it, having died peacefully in her sleep at home one night like she had wished, to reunite with my grandfather who had died four years before.

Nothing had stayed on my mind for years unlike that dream.

Around the time of that dream, I had been dating a man from Baltimore. Our relationship was long distance and the dream confirmed that we weren’t meant to be. Despite that, I tried to hold onto him when he broke it off over text two years later. I was trying to prevent life from taking its natural course out of fear. I was a shy twenty-year-old stunted with major social anxiety. The fear that had manifested was that no one else in life would ever love me, even though the relationship I was in wasn’t the best.

When I told my mother about the dream, she said that maybe the song my son sang meant that whenever I heard it in real life, the person I was with was the one.

I didn’t meet James until almost three years later. We met digitally with a right swipe before physically meeting at a gastropub in town where he won me over with his handsome looks and confidence. Another plus was that he seemed to genuinely be interested. Not even a week later we were in an exclusive relationship. Not even six months later I packed my bags and moved with him from the South to the Midwest.

But weeks before we sought off with our road trip, we were tucked into a small diner having breakfast. A couple of the workers fussed around with the jukebox before settling onto a song. The song from my dream filled the room. It also played on the radio in the Midwest. It was how I knew I was in the right place.

Almost a year later James and I adopted Wolfie together. Half a year later we had our own house and were engaged, before getting married that next year. Weeks before the wedding I was pregnant. In a way, my life where I had always felt so alone had changed. I wasn’t so alone anymore. I was actually happy.

Twenty weeks felt like an eternity to arrive. But when it did, I was eager though there was a tinge of nervousness mixed in. James sat to my right side in the ultrasound room as I laid on the exam chair. The nurse pressed the transducer against my slicked-up belly. On the sonogram showed our moving baby as she settled ready to tell us the gender, but it was obvious as I recognized the part showing on the screen for all to see.

Deep down inside I had known, and it was the confirmation that I needed.

“As you can see, it’s a boy!” the nurse exclaimed.

We both gave out a laugh of happiness as I suddenly realized my wish still had been fulfilled. My grandmother had met her grandchild even before he had become a physical being. It brought tears to my eyes upon the realization over seven years later how strange it all had been carefully orchestrated.

All that was left was for me to meet my son, and for him to take his first breath of life.

*Song referenced: Together Forever by Rick Astley