Me and Sgt. Pepper and Belly Buttons

I danced to a CD of Sgt. Pepper this morning. I grew up dancing and singing to the vinyl album my father bought when the record came out.

In the liner notes, I discovered that the Beatles started recording the album on December 6, 1966. I was conceived four days later (yes, my mother told me; she knew she was pregnant when she woke up the next day). The album was released during my mother’s her third trimester, with me fully capable of hearing.

I love the idea that I was incubated right alongside this momentous, gorgeous music, and that I was fed by its sounds right up to my birth.

I like to imagine my pregnant mama dancing in the living room with my long-limbed papa, delighting in the new, amazing music.

Now where do belly-buttons come in? Well I’ve just discovered Paul Coelho (I know I know, where have I been?) and The Witch of Portobello. All his talk of navels – as the center of our bodies, of our earth, as connection to the Great Mother – was in my mind as I belly (-button) danced to ‘Within You and Without You.’

And so: forty years after my mother’s joy and music poured into me through my navel, my own joy and dance poured out from there.

Shivers up my swirling spine: a grounding, transcendent moment of connection to the deepest realities of beauty, rhythm, and belly buttons.

A moment that spilled out into merry laughter, and now, these words.