A globe-jewel of proud and dusky countenance. . . my friend Maria deposited a red cabbage into my hands, in the middle of the hospital, the other day.

These exchanges of hand occur weekly – bounty and thoughtfulness colliding into my lap. Jars of exotic golden fruit mince, gingery sauces, bags bursting with desperate asylum seeking lettuces, a farm (replete with laying hens and lowing beasts) to stay on for two weeks, perfect strawberries, life stories, and stories of life.

We take each other’s blood (when our faces look like low hemoglobin incarnate), opinions, massages, and feedback forms for our Midwifery Standards Review. We laugh and snipe, clench our teeth at each other over the latest absurd phone call or specialist review we disagree with, talk birth, see birth, talk dying and on some quiet nights, hung with silvered weight, see dying.

We take these pieces – of birth, life, death – and bring them home.  Blend and shape them, make them spin into the fabric of us. We have raw materials here. What we make of them, makes the soul.

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