For me, the journey tells a story – as important as the destination. GPS is just about the destination – its clinical precision can be both boring and utterly wrong. When you can read a map well, you are able to tease out the stories in the landscape. You can see how the new road follows an old riverbed, skirts an iron-age fort, or marches ramrod straight along a Roman road. You can see how a town lies on a raised beach, even though it is now 10 miles inland.
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As a busy birth doula, I have to book our vacation time 9 months in advance. I can't fly to Hawaii on less than 24 hours notice like I did before I was a doula. Spontaneous trips were exciting, but there was a cost to that kind of spontaneity. We lost the depth of experience that research, reading and planning can bring. So, we think of the 9 months of waiting for our yearly summer European trip as a gestational period...allowing time for thoughtful planning, gradual learning, reflection on past experiences, and the building expectation.
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I was at a home birth many years ago. The new mother had nursed the baby, and was just drying off after showering, and chatting to her husband about what had just happened, while I was quietly tidying the bedroom. As the parents came out of the bathroom, shining and clean, the midwife approached the baby, who was lying in a moses basket. With the parents' permission, the midwife was going to do the newborn exam. She leaned close to the baby, and said something like..."Hello - I'm Patti. I'd like to pick you up and weigh you and measure you."
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