The Fool is the only unnumbered card in the tarot. She’s a fool not in the demeaning way we often use the word, but in a way that is both supremely innocent and supremely trusting. With a rose in her hand and a song in her heart, she steps off the cliff into the unknown without a second thought.

This is the card of new beginnings, and it’s the metaphor I’ve always used for having a child. There is no assurance of a healthy pregnancy, or a pregnancy at all. There is no assurance of a healthy child, or an easy child, or a child that will grow into an independent adult, or a child that will outlive us. There is no assurance that it will be fun or feel good. There is no assurance of anything but that we are stepping off a cliff and can never return. That we are making a profound, life-long commitment to a complete mystery, that there will be bumps and bruises and probably more than one hard fall, and that we will be transformed forever by it all.

Having a child is one of the greatest acts of hope and trust and love we can make.

And so many of us do it, over and over again, even when we know.

Which is to say, I’m pregnant.

*****

A couple months before Shefa died, I was hanging out with several large homeschooling families at a pool. Shefa was playing with the other toddlers, adorable in his little swim trunks, ecstatically stepping in and out of the kiddie pool and banging his watermelon rind against every available surface. We were talking about family size, and I was sharing that my partner and I had always said “One kid is great, two would be even better, and after that, we’ll see.” We didn’t want to be greedy, we were getting older, and we also didn’t know if we wanted to handle the chaos of a larger family, not to mention the time and burden that extended childbearing and the raising of infants puts on us.

Somewhere in that conversation, suddenly, as if I’d swallowed a giant butterfly, I thought, “I want to have more children.” The thought filled me with a golden light, the same kind of light I felt when I conceived both my children – and when I met their father. I went home and told Yaakov who said (wisely), “let’s talk about it later.” Shefa was only 10 or 11 months old and we figured we had at least a year to think it over.

That golden light filled me all week. It surprised me, but was undeniable in it’s message: More children.

Everyone who knows me knows I am a fool for golden light.

I will step off the cliff every single time.

*****

Pregnancy feels complicated right now.

Folks ask me how I’m feeling in this pregnancy, and I have a hard time answering. Tired, nauseous, emotional, grateful: for sure. And there’s also a lot more right now. I’ve tried to write and rewrite this section for weeks. I keep wanting to have some way of explaining what this is all like, and what I need, and how I want my story to be understood.

The truth is, I don’t understand it myself. I’ve stepped off the cliff into a dense fog. I see flashes of light and I navigate in that direction, but I have no idea where it will lead me, or why, or anything at all really except that following the light is probably the most sensible thing to do.

My grandmother – a Holocaust survivor who recently lost her beloved husband of 69 years – read my last blog posts and wrote to me, “this is how life is.” Certainly this is how my life is. Growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust I always knew that my very existence was seeded in an inexplicable jumble of horror and miracle and death and life. I knew that life moves forward even after unimaginable loss and suffering, and that it is worthy to continue. These realities were the things that had literally made my body.

I am pregnant, parenting, and grieving. I am who I was and I am something new besides. I don’t have enough feet to stand in all the worlds I exist in, but somehow I stand in them all. They blend and separate and blend again, hour by hour, minute by minute, as I weave my new reality. It’s exhausting.

There is no doubt for me that I have the full and enthusiastic support of Yaakov, Nahara, and Shefa in bringing this new life into the world. I look forward to meeting this new person and I feel them with me already. And I feel clear about this choice myself: ready, supported, bathed in the miraculous.

And I worry about so many things. About being visibly pregnant and having to navigate other people’s reactions. About Shefa’s life being erased or becoming invisible in the minds of others, though I know my community is wide and deep and holds his memory and spirit with us. I worry about the PTSD I will almost certainly battle after this child is born. I was already the mother who obsessively checked my children’s breathing at night. What will parenting an infant be like now? I know more than ever how little control I have.

After a week of staring at a blinking cursor on this post, I’m realizing there’s no way to finish this story right now. I’m right in the middle of it, writing here about something I barely understand, something I will perhaps never understand while I’m still alive. Any fear of death I may have had seems to be gone, but I’m committed to life: not in an intellectual way but in a way my body just does, and I’m grateful for that. I take steps forward when I can, and when I need to just sit down and cry, I do that. Oddly enough, I find myself trusting god more than ever, more than I ever conceived that I could. Slowly, I’m moving in a direction that I assume is forward. Most of the time it feels more like I’m being carried. I’m ok with that. This is how life is.