Tales from Georgia: on soul food and sonograms

Here I am again, just looking back on the last 24 hours. My Aunt Kay took me to my favorite southern restaurant: Shirley's sole food. From the outside, it pretty much looks like an old broken down building. The inside isn't much nicer really, but the food is to die for.

As you walk in, you're greeted by old spiritual songs on the intercom system. Friendly faces ask you if they can refill your glass of ice tea, and while you wait for them to finish pouring they tell you about how they found Jesus and ask you if you are born again. It's a neat little place really and it feels a lot like entering a wardrobe into a southern kind of Narnia.

With foods like fried catfish and cabbage salad, you wouldn't think the food sounded even edible. But it really is something to be had. And as I sat eating the last bite of cornbread I was oddly sad to leave that place and enter the real world again.


Then it was off to a wonderful evening with my friend Bethany. It's a strange kind of experience: giving birth. You never know how you will make it out alive at the time, or who you will meet during the process. But it is just such an event that led to me becoming good friends with my midwife Bethany. We had a lovely evening of Mexican food and catching up. We shared our passions for scrapbooking and babies and caught up with everything we had missed in the last year. She then offered to let me see my baby on the sonogram machine., and I gladly accepted.

Having a friend put that squishy goop on my belly and find my angel baby on the screen was a great experience, one I am glad I got to share with her. We were glad to find at least one arm that had 2 bones in it and five fingers on it. You cannot know what a relief that is. And I finally found out the sex of my baby!!

All in all, it was quite an eventful day and I am glad to have experienced it here in good ole' Georgia!