Japan has a word for this feeling: Ma (間). It’s the space between things. The pause between the inhale and the exhale. The silence between two notes of music. Right now, my entire body is Ma .
Just Before the Birth Again: A Pause in Japan, Heavy with Waiting Just before the birth again- Japan- Pregnant- U...
— A very pregnant mother in Tokyo.
But just before the birth again, there is this. A quiet room in Japan. A full belly. A heart that is breaking and healing in the same beat. Japan has a word for this feeling: Ma (間)
A quiet corner of Tokyo, Japan Condition: 39 weeks, 4 days. Very pregnant. Very still. The silence between two notes of music
I am sitting on the floor of our apartment. The zabuton cushion is flat beneath me. The kettle is humming a low, wet note. Outside, a neighbor’s wind chime ( furin ) clinks in the humid August air. And inside me, a second life is doing the strange, quiet calculus of deciding when to enter the world.