ORANGE BLOSSOM CITRUS TAPIOCA PUDDING (VEGAN).

We had planned all this for months. It was the third birth I’d had the privilege to attend, and when they asked, I shared what I had experienced before: That birth seemed to draw a woman simultaneously out of and deeper into her body, into an alternate dimension from which birth occurred, a feat of physical and psychospiritual endurance like none I’d ever seen. That all I knew how to do was show up and be present with whatever was happening, whether Liba was laughing or crying or bleeding or peeing or throwing up or trying to pull the headboard of her bed off the wall (that happened at my friend Gabby’s birth). I was game for it all.

Part of my gameness, or perhaps most of it, came from my having been with my mother at her death. The first birth I attended was just three months after my mother died, and I was stunned by how similar these two elemental rites of passage were. The primary difference—at least in my mind—was that with birth you got a baby at the end. But both were, unequivocally, the most wrenching forms of human struggle I’d ever seen.

In birth, though, all of that suffering was subsumed into the joy of the new child, the chaos of hormones that rushed in to replace pain with joy, and doubt with the certainty of parenthood. Even for me, though the child was not mine, the bliss of new life dislodged much of the trauma of watching my mother wrestle into death.

Of course, there is also the fact that Liba is one of a few close friends who knew my mother, knew her when she was healthy, knew her when we still thought she might outlive us all in her seemingly abundant wellness. I knew Micah, too, from our college days, as he and Liba met on a Birthright trip to Israel—both the children of rabbis, both guided by a desire to live in a world that was better than what came before. Reconciling the span of time that transformed the three of us from teenagers preoccupied by heady college seminars to adults preparing to bring a child into the world is mystifying.

And yet, there we were, that sweet February morning. There I was, privileged to be with these people becoming parents. Being with birth as well as death, perhaps, is the way we get by as humans, the way we forget suffering to live anew. Watching them receive their child with tears streaming,  I thought that this act of childbearing was an act of the utmost faith: By bringing a child into the world, they were boldly expressing their belief in the future of our world, our people.

And now here I am, exhausted and a little sore, which is hilarious—I know what I’m feeling is an infinitesimal fraction of what Liba feels (and what Micah will feel as his nights turn to tending a newborn). But it’s true: My back aches from applying counter pressure through eleven hours of contractions on only two hours of sleep. But my heart, my heart is as full as ever.

Full of the insane magic that is birth, of the beauty of this new baby being, of the tenderness of seeing Liba and Micah become even more stellar humans than they already are. Of witnessing one of my dearest friends lose and find herself in strength previously unknown so that she can mother a daughter that will, undoubtedly, change the world.

So for all of that, a mindlessly easy vegan tapioca pudding that holds just a touch of sweetness, and an irrepressible beauty of flavor. I’d eat it for breakfast or dessert, or frankly for any meal. It’s lightened with a heady swirl of orange blossom water, and anchored with bee pollen, pistachios, and citrus. It’s a pudding that’s been on my mind since I saw this blood orange chia in Bon Appetit, and this felt like the time for it. A reason to celebrate in nourishment. A riot of love. A welcoming.