In the Beginning Billimarie Lubiano Robinson
Everything has its intricate beginning. Everything except for birth. When people ask me how many weeks I am, I tell them two answers: “Eighteen from conception. The medical industry wants me to say twenty.” We are trained to be unsure of our own conceptions, to leave it in the hands of a profitable industry. It is an example of some other force authoring a contrived and safe narrative for our bodies, like a script that is assigned to us—one we had no hand in writing. I fight back against this conditioning in small ways, like giving different dates of my last menstrual period when asked. I watch with a wry smile on my face as professionals plug lies into their machines, then read the wrong answers back to me. There is an undercurrent to this spirit. As I take joy in rebelling in small and playful ways—like asking obnoxiously why a waiting room filled with pregnant women does not offer healthy snacks—I present to you the real beginning, a departure from the stale tales we have been forced to chew. This is a return to a truth that belongs to the body, the spirit, the heart, and the black brown dirt of this Earth— You came to me like a vibrant wind along the shore. It would be wrong to say I was not expecting you; right to say I was not entirely conscious of your season. Of course there were signs. There were signs in the early days: the call to visit spiraling cities by the sea, a remembrance of all things coral white and deep blue. Collecting sea shells like a song. Each intricate twig and stone, gifts from the flow of rivers and trees. 15
