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i'm getting ready to shed an old layer and expose a new one. neither of those layers are quite ready yet, but the anticipation of transition leaves me feeling the same way i do every time before i move. i'm sad to leave an era behind, but always excited enough to have my belongings packed in boxes weeks before the move, with one foot out the door before i'm finished. my relationships become either more intense or more distant.

and it's all starting to happen now.

last night i was eating foraged huckleberry coconut ice cream over glazed white peaches with liz. and i suddenly remembered that i believe you have to know where you came from before you can understand where you're going. and where you are, presently, for that matter. i don't mean to sound cliche or woowoo. i know i do. i know it sounds like kitschy inspirational blah blah blah, and normally i would have a healthily cynical reaction towards it, but this was one of those moments when you're eating ice cream and it just resonates and it's true.

i remembered (and i'm always a little surprised at this) how i'm not so different now from who i've ever been. different skins, same becca-spirit.

i think this was all instigated by a conversation with my mother about my birth. i mean, holy geez, i know i'm a cancer sun, leo ascending, sagittarius moon, but i don't even know what it was like when i entered the universe under those stars.

totally natural birth, short labor, pushed out in a semi-sitting position, immediate skin-to-skin contact. i popped out about six hours after contractions first started on a sunday morning when we all should have been at church. i was the messiest of her three births. they had cleaned my older sister off a bit and wrapped her in a blanket before my mom held her, so when they plopped me straight onto her belly she just thought, "whoa, this feels weird."

during her most intense contractions, the only thing she could focus on was this tiny tear in one of the curtains. that was all she could look at.