looking back

It's been over a year since Danielle was admitted to hospital with the impending birth of our baby daughter. I had to force myself to read back over the blog from that time, I thought it might still be too difficult to face those feelings again, for while we are a happy family, it is still easy to tap into that frame of mind that I found myself in last year. The below was written exactly a year ago, a day before the birth:

"And so everything changed again. And now we know exactly what's happening we just have to wait for it. A little in limbo, like pausing time right before something is about to happen, while knowing that the time elapsing will do nothing to prepare you or educate you for what is going to happen when you unpause. I think in a couple of days from now, when everything has settled down into some sort of consistency, I'm going to sleep like a hibernating bear."

It's strange to have such omniscient knowledge over ones own past, a dramatic irony which can powerfully foretell the future yet do nothing to stop things from happening. How little we knew a year ago, of the things which lay ahead. In fact when I think about what I said, about getting into some sense of consitency, I don't think that person would have believed anyone who told him he would not find that feeling until many months from there, and many miles too, when he found himself in Mae Sot (especially seems he thought he was going to Panama at that point, he could not have known of the coming flood which would rip through Soloy, killing and uprooting so many, and nor would those in the village for that matter, such is the useless power we hold over those characters inhabiting that past world.) It was not until we found ourselves alone and as foreigners that we were able to understand things from our own perspective, I don't think I realised that, until reading that year old entry. We were until that time beset by situations and people and had little time to consider who we are as a family. That time alone was so important for us, as being able to determine our lives for ourselves still is.