Oh, Baby! | Muskegon, MI
I’ve always been someone who feels big. When I get good news I cry, dance, laugh, I feel it all. And a pregnancy announcement is no different. When Chloe messaged me to start planning her maternity session I sobbed. I have known Chloe for many years at this point, and to see how life had unfolded in a way that would bring her so much joy was magical.
I love that as photographers we often are included in that small inner circle of folks who get to find out first. I kept Chloe and Steven’s secret for months but now - I finally get to share their maternity session with you all as we eagerly await the arrival of their newest family member.
During our planning, we decided that Pere Marquette beach in Muskegon would be the perfect location. The beach itself is stunning, and the area nearby offers a great park for kids to blow off their extra steam. And if you’re hungry - there’s a beachfront bar and pub right on the boardwalk.
know everyone talks about the smell of saltwater and the ocean, but there’s just something special about how Lake Michigan addresses your senses.
The breeze smelled like sunscreen, cold water, hot dogs (the good kind!), and fresh grass after rain. The sun blessed us with a gentle warmth, and a live band covered Skynard. Fellow beach lovers were thrilled to be able to enjoy their beer and hot dogs as nature intended - with a slight sunburn and the laughter of their friends.
And now, in the week of the summer solstice, we continue to wait for this little person to make his grand entrance into the world. And while I wait for another message, this time to let me know that the baby is coming, I thought I would share a poem.
The body, bearing something ordinary as light
Opens as in a room somewhere the friend opens in poppy, in flame,
burns & bears the child — out.
When I did it was the hours & hours of breaking. The bucking of
it all, the push & head
not moving, not an inch until,
when he flew from me, it was the night who came
flying through me with all its hair,
the immense terror of his face & noise.
I heard the stranger & my brain, without looking, vowed
a love-him vow. His struggling, merely, to be
split me down, with the axe, to two. How true,
the thinness of our hovering between the realms of Here, Not Here.
The fight, first, to open, then to breathe,
& then to close. Each of us entering the world
& entering the world like this.
Soft. Unlikely. Then —
the idiosyncratic minds & verbs.
Beloveds, making your ways
to & away from us, always, across the centuries,
inside the vastness of the galaxy, how improbable it is that this iteration
of you or you or me might come to be at all — Body of fear,
Body of laughing — & even last a second. This fact should make us fall all
to our knees with awe,
the beauty of it against these odds,
the stacks & stacks of near misses
& slimmest chances that birthed one ancestor into the next & next.
Profound, unspeakable cruelty who counters this, who does not see.
& so to tenderness I add my action. - Aracelis Girmay
With Love,
Meg
