We're All Saints

Okay, here's an email I intended to send to a friend but thought better of it. We used to be roommates and close buddies before husbands and kids came along. We both came from religious backgrounds and she has gotten progressively more churchy while I have gotten progressively less so. We spend very little time together now and it always feels like we're trying to talk around what we think so as not to offend the sensibilities of the other. I try not to be too crass and agnostic; she tries not to wear her religious beliefs on her sleeve. It's uncomfortable.

Anyway, I dearly miss getting to fire off emails with thoughts like those that follow. She's about the only friend I could ever do serious navel gazing with without getting eye rolls or uncomfortable giggles. But I'm hurt that she hasn't made an effort to continue our friendship and I keep vowing to distance myself, so blabbing on about personal growth during pregnancy doesn't seem the way to do that.

Anyhow, esta aqui:

"The All Saints/All Souls celebration sounds wonderful. Embracing death as a part of life. I was so scared of pregnancy and birth before it happened that I feel like that was on my mind a lot in the past year. It's weird; I was drawn to watch some pretty violent movies and had some incredibly violent dreams while I was pregnant. Somehow that felt right...I went to see a movie while I was pregnant...I forget its name now but it was about a very imaginative little girl who lives in a very violent world - she's in south America under a socialist regime in a time of revolution if I remember correctly, her father has died and her loving mother remarries a very unloving captain in the army. He is cruel, life is cruel and lonely, and so she makes up lavish stories in her head in which she is the heroine. I heard an interview with the director that made me want to see it (Pan's Labyrinth! That's the movie); the little girl was very like him, and he thought the make believe was a positive way of writing yourself into life's narrative, and processing all of the scary and adult things that are going on around you. Anyway, it seemed like an important part of the pregnancy, accepting fear and blood and guts and then making...um....fear and blood and guts lemonade? Oh, I guess we could call that a human. :-)"