It’s a minefield of days to dread.

My first pregnancy loss was on February 10, 2005.

My second pregnancy loss would have been due the first week of February 2006.

My third pregnancy loss would have been due the last week of February, this year.

It seems apt that a personally dismal month happens to be at this tilt—when my hemisphere is reclined, in rest, anticipating. It’s cold and the trees are black against the sky. Melting has a scent, but I can’t smell it yet.

It’s February. It’s necessary. The word fallow keeps going through my mind. The older I get, the more I see patterns in my past. Nothing seems to bloom anew for a season. It’s a forced quiet and fighting it is futile.

But it’s okay. The days prompt me to consider those could-have-beens and let them go, one by one.

When I drive to Aidan’s school, I pass a bald eagle reserve. It is near a large lake. The trees are enormous, aged, and bare. It’s easy to see the eagles upright on the tip top branches, even in the most bitter and unforgiving weather. They do not waver or flap. They are still. They witness the lake freezing over, they witness the ice sighing away at sunrise, back to join the clouds rolling over the mountains.

They don’t seek sunnier places, south. They must know, deep inside, something good is coming and it won’t be long.