Why I’m Addicted To Nesting

  1. Nesting .

Verb.

When a pregnant woman gets an insatiable desire to expend excessive energy on redoing her home, analogous to a mother bird building a nest for her soon-to-be little chirplings.

It’s hitting me deeply, in a place squished halfway between my head and stomach.

Resistance is futile.

Marshall’s beckons like an oasis of promises that will pump jubilation and satisfaction into my bones.

And it delivers. Orange, pink, and white couch cushions that scream of luxury and safety.

When I brought them home and fluffed them, incomparable tranquility draped over me like a deep cranial massage of the cerebellum.

A child can be born here, I thought to myself satisfied, as I snuggled into the cushions. Everything will be okay.

Isn’t that what nesting is? A physical manifestation of a promise? A way of deluding or convincing ourselves that this time will be different? That this time will be easier?

Truthfully, my modern-day insides still occasionally wrestle with the centuries old question of human continuation:

Can I bring another child into the world? Am I strong enough? Sane enough? Will my inner demons destroy myself and my family through the chaos of another child? Will the world crumble and destroy itself at my doorstep?

And as the child within my uterus grows and yawns, I repeat this mantra to myself, as I compulsively prepare for the homecoming. Everything will be okay. This time will be different.

In every generation of darkness and displacement, it seems women have discovered that will to believe.

Isn’t that a miracle?

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Like our Jewish mamas, deep in the pits of slave-driven Egypt, who ignored the death threat on newborn sons, taking upon themselves to seduce their husbands returning from back-breaking, soul-numbing labor in the dark of the night.

Their actions, stemming from a core belief that this too shall pass was an impossible thing to expect of anyone. Out of the range of human rational consciousness.

Yet it happened and continues to happen. The light at the end of the tunnel . The hope.

It is the only way women can ever bear the weight of bringing another soul and body into this world.

From the deep emuna that beats from a place beyond the standard rationale of this fated, crumbling, corrupted world.

Beyond our memories of sleepless newborn nights, mommy disaster days, and earth-splitting fights with spouses and coworkers as we struggle to balance our overwhelming load.

Beyond our knowledge of worldly horrors and impending violence and ubiquitous danger.

Instead, our minds redirect us to the promise that was given to us in the pit of our carved ribs since the beginning of time.

We can and must continue seducing the world and each other into believing this.

Things will get better. The next generation will change things. We will change things. 

Plus I have amazing couch cushions to sink into whenever we need to rest.

So if you have any free time, come on over and help me paint my walls. They absolutely are dying to be colored purple.

When they are saturated with that holy majestic hue, then everything will definitely be okay. Better than okay.

This next time will be glorious.

I just know it.