Pregnant

I happened to notice a  woman who was pregnant the other day. In the olden days we would have said that she was ‘with child’. I’m really not quite sure why we stopped using that phrase because it told it as it was with all its trepidation, excitement and awe.

I thought some more and a phrase came gurgling to the surface. “Pregnant with possibilities”. The chance sighting brought back all sorts of fond memories from a very long time ago. All three of us … Mother, father and child were pregnant with possibilities. Some of them we knew about. Going to school, sleepless nights, scraped knees and soiled nappies.

Some we didn’t know about. Broken hearts, tricky decisions, fumbling words, spontaneous laughter in the most unexpected of circumstances.

It occurs to me now that most of the possibilities were hidden from our view, wrapped up in the years that lay ahead, invisible to us and maybe that was a good thing. We would never have believed a time traveller if they gave us some spoilers.

It also occurs to me that we are all pregnant with possibilities. Even in our dotage, there are still a multiplicity of possibilities that we can choose to ignore or run like mad with. The difference I suspect is that we are much more aware of the consequences of these possibilities and so we should, in theory at least, make wiser decisions.

It is perhaps a matter of being aware of what possibilities greet you each morning. Which will you choose to embrace with a passion and which will you shun and what are the unexpected ones that find you?

Like the page in my diary that pleads with me to scribble potentialities on it. All of us are pregnant with possibilities. What are yours?