comic relief

My dear friend Kim found a book for me that has been an excellent source of stress relief and humor over the past couple of days. It's called "It Could Happen to You!" by Martha Brockenbrough, who met her husband in Tacoma, and now lives in Seattle. It's written in a loose "diary" style, and follows the candid observations of a woman and her husband through their first pregnancy. As I read from her chapter on the first trimester this morning, this passage gave me those old "warm & fuzzies":

Still, I was counting the days until I got to hear the heartbeat. And when the day finally arrived, I was thrilled...'What's it going to sound like?' I wondered. I grew less rational from there. 'What if we can't hear it? What if this is all some sort of mistake? What if something is wrong?' I felt myself get very cold as I lay on the table and waited...[then] the room was filled with steady drumming, like the sound a horse makes when it runs across hard ground. It's a dancing rhythm, filled with energy, a music that made my chest squeeze with joy. Then the nurse moved the probe to pick up my heartbeat as well. Mine was a slower, rushing rhythm, like moving water. Together this was the sound of two lives sharing a body, a curious, beautiful song that I could have listened to for hours while I tried to find the meaning within. Maybe this is why all human cultures have music. It's the way we bring our heartbeats outside and share them, and say, 'We're alive.'