Witnessing Our Words
Spring is a deliciously manic season for me. I sit cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of a hospital in Queens, eyes closed and face tilted toward the sun: this is my process for shedding the callous of the previous months seasonal depression, which, despite my best efforts, I get, and then forget about, like clockwork every year. This is the first very warm day in a while. I don't want to move, for fear of ruining it, so I try to see everything through my closed lids. The sidewalk is empty and I'm shameless. Someone shoots me a brief and misguided sympathetic look while tossing change at me. In reality my eyes should be open: I'm supposed to be looking for someone I've never seen before, a client who would like me to attend, as a doula, the birth of her child . We've been put in touch through the adoption agency she is working with to find a family for her baby. I think that if she were to come and see me, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, it might make a po