When I was pregnant with my first child, my mother in law said something beautiful. Actually, I think she was paraphrasing something her Grandmother had taught her? Its written on a card she sent when she heard the good news, which is saved in a box upstairs somewhere. Basically: the more children you have, the more you come to understand your heart is capable of infinite expansion. Its the loveliest thing she's ever said to me.

We have to come to grips with the fact that our time on earth is limited. That is the hardest part--mortality. After that, it is slightly easier but no less relentlessly true that we have to choose what we will do. And in so choosing, will also be choosing what we won't do. Where we will and won't be.

I heard of an old woman who spent her entire 80-something years on the Outer Banks of N.C. She never left Hatteras Island. Hatteras is a fragile and fierce spit of sand staring down the Atlantic ocean and only about two miles wide. She lived her whole life there. We could say that is sad, thinking of everything she missed inland. But there is also something extremely beautiful about her life, to me. She is of that place wholly, as much as the oysters, sea oats, local accent, and salt. The people of Hatteras were so isolated for so long, to this very day they carry an Old English lilt in their speech, from their ancestors the Pilgrims who landed there and never left. Much like the isolated folks of Appalachia who arrived from the Highlands of Scotland, found solace in the mountains, and never left. They also retain local quirks of language, though the accent is lost from what is was, even since I was a child. I can clearly hear these regions as distinct from each other and from the accent of central NC.

Its cool to be of a place. But the world is huge. There is so much to see. Every time I've gone out into the world, my heart has expanded in a thrilling happy way. I've met and loved new people, heard new accents, discovered new foods and wonders from the geologic to the mystic. But always with a longing for home. Only to return home to discover a new longing for the wider world, a heart expanded in both joy and longing.

When I was pregnant with my first child my sister in law gave me a copy of "Operating Instructions" by Anne Lamott. Its a journal of Lamott's first year as a mother in which she learns she's "basically fucked" because she loves her son so much. She comes to understand she is now eternally vulnerable to the pain of unimaginable loss.

Its not just babies that expand our hearts. And its not just land we leave, when we roam. I'm ticking all of this around, wondering if my husband's work will ever lead us further afield. Its so hard to think of leaving. Its so sad to think of never going. But the truth is, life is for breaking our hearts open wider and wider so we can love more and more. Even though more and more always twins with less and less. We can't make life hurt less, but we can figure out how to enjoy it more.

"RELISH!" Bradbury said.