Two Joys, of the Big Variety

Two Joys, of the Big Variety

june_gervais_family

 

This week brought two great joys.

My second son, Milo, was born. Big healthy fella: just a drop shy of 9 lbs., a shade short of 22″.

And on the day we brought him home from the hospital, I had a surprise in my mailbox: copies of my first long-form print publication. My novella, A Fortune,  appears in this winter’s Big Fiction.

Often I listen to my life and hear chords, resonant notes over notes. This is one of those moments. The theme of this issue of Big Fiction is “Life and Death.”  This time last year, I was pregnant with another baby whom I miscarried around Easter. She was conceived during a sad time in my life, and we talked about naming her Mercy.

Maybe the secret identity of grief is hungering agent–it gets us hungry enough to know joy when we taste it. I have written elsewhere, candidly, about my struggles with new motherhood (the tedium; the difficulty and fear). But since Milo’s birth I have been riding a wave of peace and bliss I did not imagine possible. (“Milo,” by the way, means “merciful, peaceful, mild.”)june_gervais_big_fiction

Incidentally, that novella I just published is a sort of theological mystery story, and among its themes–grief, doubt, calling–is the image of God as a nursing mother. 

“Can a mother forget her nursing child?
Can she feel no love for the child she has borne?
But even if that were possible,
I would not forget you!”
Isaiah 49:15

PS You can order a copy of Big Fiction #5 here. 🙂

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