It’s 5:28am and today marks Jeb’s official eighth birthday. His excitement will rouse him from bed early, I’m sure, which means there’s not much time here for me to wax poetic on that auspicious day eight years ago.

Besides, I’ve written about it before. Various versions, that is, as there are always more than one perspective on an event, especially one like birth.

Last year produced two accounts. “At the Threshold” (which my dad said was a bit hard to read) and “Getting the Darkness” which was a combination of heartbreak and spiritual crisis.

Ok, ok. So where’s the joy? The story of the miracle of birth? It’s actually all part of the tale, just complexly woven in, like most things in life. But yes, my journey through motherhood, beginning on the day the pregnancy test strip went pink, has not been all white in a world of b and w. There have been shadows of blackness. Definite greys.

But there, too, have been crowning moments of exhalation.

Playing with the verb (the majority of my birth experience was with Jeb’s head just short of crowning but not fully coming out into the world) I thought I’d gift both Jeb and myself with an honorary crown today. Acknowledgement of the Divine Yoga we experienced together on December 5, 2003. That we lived. And continue to live this life together. Learning, growing, loving through all of the whites and blacks and greys of in-between.

We are royal in our efforts. Regal in our path as mother and son in a vast world of shadowed doorways and opening skies.

This morning I come across this featured photo. Taken by Jeb when he was six years old. I love his photographs because I get to see the world through his eyes.

The location, Polihale. Roughly translated as “the house of the dead”, where it is said that all human souls make a final pass through the earth plane before going on to the spirit world.

With a theme of the full spectrum of black to white, it seems fitting to include a rainbow. A burst of color and sunlight among the shadows in the place where life meets death. To feature the house of the dead on my son’s birthday. Mix all of these symbols and metaphors into one big potpourri of Everything.

This is Life, I think. All of it.

I’m still learning.
We are still living.
Maybe we are all still being born.
Crowning.