It’s not that this is not a magical time, because it is. We are sitting at the eve of a new era; Briar starts kindergarten in less than a month, some 8 blocks away Avery starts preschool and Fin gets a crack at being the only kid. This is the last summer of babies and yet I am without words.

I look at my laptop with an aching, I am desperate to write something down, to mark this time. I come up empty every time, either too nervous to open the dashboard on blogger or too keenly aware that the words I would write would be forced, fake, unworthy.

This is my space to remember and with very few exceptions I have kept it a place that is without artifice or the slightest sliver of something that might make me question it years from now. I think I know what’s wrong and I’ve gone round and round with whether or not to try and push through it.

Too many of you (thank you to each and everyone of you) have written to prod me—

“You ok?”

“Should I be worried?”

“Thinking about you and hoping you are ok.”

It’s something we do, this checking in on people who’ve become a part of our routine, whether they know it or not. Look at me, so clearly stalling, even during a post intended to lay it all out there.

I am bleeding. I have been bleeding since just before BlogHer. The bleeding at BlogHer was significant and startling and occurred during my first trip away from my daughters and Sean, whilst sharing a room with two wonderful women I’d never met before.

I’ve had 3 babies in five years, I have been nursing without pause since September of 2004, I am under incredible stress and I err on the side of anxious. All of these things add up to, “Hmm, have you considered this might be hemorrhoids?”

And I have. And I promise there is nothing that I would like more than to report that I freaked the hell out over some hemorrhoids. Truly.

The thing is, this is a magical time and I have these three beautiful daughters and a husband I adore. I can’t help but wonder if I have too much, if this happiness and my health to date has exceeded the good I was supposed to get.

The doctor talked about the things it could be and very candidly put out there that Cancer was a possibility. He later said everything really points to something else, but we can’t know yet.

And so I sit, fretting and worrying, willing and bargaining. I imagine new wives and stepmoms, milestones missed and promises not kept. I doubt everything I have done to now, my convictions about organics, my theories on physical activity and fresh air. I want to be calm and have a wait-and-see attitude, but I fear that if I don’t prepare I am being irresponsible.

Honestly, I think a part of me thinks that if I share with you how Finley has started catching my eye, cocking her head and saying, “Hai wuh-yuve shoo,” and how it literally makes my knees buckle, that that will be it. That time will freeze and the knowing and chronicling of my life with three girls will stall at the first I love you’s of my last baby.

I am absolutely terrified and up until now I thought I shouldn’t say that, but there it is.

I am bleeding and we don’t know why. Tuesday I have a colonoscopy. I am hoping with everything that I have that I’ll be back here making you pee with the tales of my handsome doc and the fiberoptic scope he used to establish that the 25+ pounds of little girl goodness I’ve pushed out of me gave me more than a lifetime of loving.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know, so maybe I could find my way to writing again.

.