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So maybe I write about this a lot. Maybe I talk about it a lot as well. But for me, writing this blog is cathartic and freeing and so I’m going to talk about it. Again.

Sometimes I forget that I have a really bad disease. I blend in to those around me, I eat what they eat, I work out the way they work out. From the outside, everything looks fine. And because of that, I find myself forgetting as well.

I forget that my life expectancy is shorter than my husband’s or my best friend’s. I forget that my body is defective. That my organs don’t work right. That I will very likely face really scary complications at some point in my life. That I will face complications at some point in my life.

I think about my eleven year-old self. My gangly, unshaven legs, oversized pink Umbros and hand-me-down tee-shirt from my sister’s youth soccer tournament. I think about my face and what it must have looked like when my mom said “you have diabetes”. I think about my bony, undefined little girl arms as they received their first of thousands of injections. The way I cried and looked to my parents to make it better, to heal it, and I think about their faces as they realized that they couldn’t. I think about how it felt to walk into Junior High wielding a bag full of needles and blood glucose test strips. I think about how it felt to like a boy for the first time and to wonder if he would like me back, if he would think I was gross or scary or strange. I think about what it felt like to be hospitalized after a severe hypoglycemic episode, and how my friends knew, and how they looked at me when I came back to school that Monday. I think about the conversations their mother’s had with them. “Anna has a serious disease”; “You are to never give Anna candy or eat junk around her”; “Anna is very sick”.

I think about the years and years that followed. A life reel of frustration and grief and anger and self-pity. Of rejection and defiance. Of of pizza and binge drinking, cigarettes and late nights screaming through tears “Fuck This!!!!!” and “That’s it God. I give up!!!!!”. Of sadness at the realization that it’s never going away. That I will probably die of this disease.

I think about my feet and how much less feeling I have then I used to. I think about my eyes and how glossy and sore they get after a long day of high blood sugar. I think about my future and how there is no reprieve. No fucking break. There will never be a time when I don’t have to inject myself with something. I think about my skin and how much it hurts. How red it is from poking and poking and poking. How profoundly heartbreaking it is to have something broken inside of you. To have been made incorrectly.

And you know what? Today I feel sorry for myself.

I feel really scared about what’s waiting for me in the future. I feel panic to think of leaving my children or my husband without a mother or a wife. To leave my parents without a daughter. To be a sad story that my friends tell down the road.

And of all the pain, and all the fear, the anger, the worry, the frustration, the sadness, you know what is worst of all?

The undeniable fact that after writing this entry, I will put away my computer. I will take a deep breath, and then I will check my blood sugar, I will inject myself with insulin.

Again and Again and Again and God Damnit, Again.

And tomorrow, and the next day and next week and next month and next year and next decade, I will still be a fucking diabetic.

And all I want to do today is forget.

I am in an unhealthy relationship with myself. And it permeates into so many crevices of my life. On some level, I’ve known for sometime that the way I see myself, the way that I value myself, is unhealthy. And yet I don’t change.

I’ve been reading Tara Brach’s “True Refuge” (https://www.amazon.com/True-Refuge-Finding-Freedom-Awakened/dp/0553807625) recently, and I’ve been trying to focus on the following two tenants:

1. Everything that happens, everything that occurs in the world is utterly, completely and naturally devoid of emotion. Each occurrence, whether it be a death, a divorce, an illness or a change in employment, each occurrence is just an occurrence-a thing that has happened in the world that we just happen to inhabit. WE-the humans-attach emotion and feeling to these occurrences. We internally decide if a new job brings pain or joy or that a divorce is the right move or a disaster. So in other words, we are in control of how we respond to life’s occurrences. They are not innately sad or hard or joyful. They are just things…that happen…in our world.
2. There is a process that we as humans follow, and for me at least, I have subscribed to it unknowingly for the past 33 years.  This process begins with a feeling. The feeling can be a twisting in our stomach, a pounding in our head, a speeding up of our heartbeat. It can also be a surge of serotonin-a burst of sunshine in our soul. Whatever it may be, the feeling occurs and is inevitably followed up by a thought. After the thought, comes the action. Here’s an example.

I got out of the shower yesterday morning and caught a glimpse of myself in our full-length mirror. I had a visceral response. A feeling in my stomach of discomfort. Of a big tangled ball being pulled apart slowly at each end. This feeling drifted up into my heart which began to beat faster. From there it moved into my chest and I felt that all too familiar feeling of anxiety. Of regret. Of shame. Next came the thoughts.

“You look fat.”
“Your stomach is saggy.”
“Other people who’ve been pregnant look better than you.”
“Why aren’t you skinnier?”
“You work out so hard, you try and eat so well, what a  joke. You’re an impostor.”

And then most importantly,

“You aren’t good enough.”

And then, the action. Even though I am a smart woman and I know that what I am about to do is wrong, I do it. I will skip breakfast. I will skip lunch. I will allow my blood sugar to rise (this surge causes your body to eat it’s own fat, you lose weight but you also slowly kill yourself). When the evening rolls around and my head is pounding from hunger and my energy is depleted, I will find myself standing in the pantry, stuffing food down my throat to try and raise my low blood sugar, to try and fuel a body that has worked out, worked a full day and is now expected to entertain and care for two perfect, beautiful little children. Children who mean everything to me. Children who lived inside of this wrinkly, stretched out stomach. Children who fed off these breasts. And I think about how I would feel if my daughter thought she was fat or ugly or worthless. It would kill me I know.

How do we break this cycle? We know-we really really really fucking know that we are incredible. That we are superheroes that grew people inside of us, that produced food to keep those people alive. That somehow these bodies wake up and work out and drive to work and work a full day and drive home and clock-in for the second job and love and care for the people in our houses. These bodies bend over and pick up crayons and legos and wash counters and feed dogs, and wipe butts and wash clothes and kiss boo-boos and band-aid scrapped knees. These bodies are the most important bodies in our children’s lives. These bodies are absolutely perfect in the eyes of our children. Why why why can’t we hear this? Why can’t we remember this as we gaze in the mirror at our various “imperfections”? Why can’t we fucking believe this?

Truth is, I don’t have the answer.

I am only just now beginning to understand the problem.

Inside of me lives two mothers.

The first is silly and creative and kind. She is patient. She is funny, she plays music and dances and makes art projects. She is good at her job. And  she is madly in love with her children. This mother craves her children throughout the day with an insatiable hunger for their touch, their voice, their selves. This mother’s heart lurches when the door to their room closes at night, signalling the end of another day with them-another day in a pool of days that will at some point in the future, cease to exist. This mother is sturdy and solid and knows in some part of her body that she is doing exactly what she has always wanted to do-exactly what she was put on this earth to do, and she is profoundly fulfilled.

The second mother is different. She is short tempered. She is irritable. She is tired in a way that she never knew was possible. She is angry and resentful and impatient and lonely. She isn’t sure that she should have become a mother. She isn’t sure that she is doing a good job. She isn’t sure that she will survive this moment, much less this life. This mother sits alone in a dark room and weeps for her old life. This mother leafs through old journals filled with worldly travels, romances and life-changing experiences-experiences that are long gone and likely to never return. This mother feels cheated. This mother feels shame.

Mother 1 and Mother 2 are consistently at battle.

The moment I wake up, I crave my children. I literally long for them. I run to their room to wake them up, all the while my heart is beating fast as I imagine hugging them, kissing them, being near them. I’m like a schoolgirl with a crush. The door opens and they smile and yell “Mommy!” as though they are genuinely surprised that I’ve come back. I hug them both and inhale their nighttime smell, kissing the tops of their messy haired heads. My son pulls my face to his and says “Mommy, I always have loved you.” My daughter kisses my nose and says “Mommy, is it the weekend time together?” My heart throbs. I feel as though I’ve never been happier, I’ve never felt more perfect and complete. I smile and scoop them up and head into the kitchen to begin breakfast.

And then I hear it.

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Give it to me! I hate you!”
“I’m gonna hit you!!!!!!”
“I don’t like you anymore”

And just like that, Mother 2 begins slithering towards the surface. I take a deep breath. I sip my coffee. It will be ok. I can do this. I am a good mother, I say.

“Mommy, I don’t want breakfast.”
“Mommy, I don’t like you-I’m gonna hit you”
“I don’t want to do anything today”
“I don’t like anybody, I’m not eating”

And then the plate of oatmeal hits the ground. The cup of milk is turned over. The pancake is fed to the dog. The toy is thrown across the room. The hair is pulled. The crying begins. The whining has never stopped.

Mother 2 swallows me whole. My eyes turn red, my heart beats fast, the bile rises in my throat like lava. It spills out of my body as I turn and yell.

“Goddamnit!”
“What is wrong with you?!”
“Why do you always do this?!!!!!”
“Go to your room!”
“That’s it, we aren’t going.”
“I’m so sick of this crap!”

The moment the words leave my lips, I feel the sharp and familiar sting of regret. I watch as their faces absorb my words. Their little mouths turn under. Their eyes well up. Their shoulders slouch. The tears spill over and just like that, my throbbing heart is breaking.

“Are you still mad Mommy?” a little voice asks me.

“We are sorry Mommy.” she says.

“Do you have a ed-ache Mommy?” they wonder.

Two pairs of eyes watch me. Two pairs of eyes, waiting, hoping, wishing for me to smile and to comfort them and to love them.

“No, mommy has to go to the bathroom” I say.

I retreat to any empty room in the house and weep. I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself. I am terrible. I should be stripped of my duties as a parent. They hate me. I don’t blame them. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’m sick of it, I’m failing at it. I can’t do this. I sob into a pillow.

But Mother 1 begins to claw her way back. She is strong like that. She reminds me that I am tough, that I don’t believe in giving up. That I am good enough. That I am trying. And that I can actually do this. I take a deep breath, I swallow Mother 2 into my belly, into the recesses of my body, to be ignored for another day. I step out of the room and listen.

“I am eating all my breakfast up. But I will share with you if you want?”
“Thank you. No thank you I am full now. Let’s be kitty cats.”
“Ok, you can be a kitty cat first.”
“Ok, we can be kitty cat friends together”

And just like that, I’m back.

I have written and erased the beginning of this post multiple times. Because I am at a loss for words. People use that expression so frequently without stopping to think what it really means. Being at a loss for words. Feeling so much inside but somehow lacking the ability to find words to capture the emotion. And so you sit with the feelings, and they swirl around inside of you-touching your heart and your mind and your fingertips. And you open your mouth to reflect, to say something to summarize what is going on inside of you, but you can’t find the words because words are insufficient and empty.

Yesterday news broke that Alton Sterling, a husband and a father, had been fatally shot by a white police officer in Baton Rouge (http://abcnews.go.com/US/slain-baton-rouge-mans-son-breaks-mom-addresses/story?id=40370065). And later that afternoon, his wife got to stand in front of reporters with her 15 year-old son weeping by her side and discuss “what happened”. What happened was her husband was murdered. What happened was that child’s father was murdered. Plucked from this earth because his life is considered less important, less valuable than others.  This morning, driving back leisurely from my morning workout, not a care in the world, I got a Google alert that Philando Castile had been stopped for a broken taillight and  fatally shot in front of his girlfriend and her four year-old daughter (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/07/minn-cop-fatally-shoots-man-during-traffic-stop-aftermath-broadcast-on-facebook/).  I sat in the driveway watching my two white children run through the backyard, collect sticks, pick up acorns and race their bikes. I looked specifically at my white son and watched him dance and wiggle and shake through the morning sunlight.Through a system built to protect him-built to prioritize him-built to value him above others. And that’s the goddamn truth isn’t it? The system that we operate in, values my son’s life more than that of our neighbor’s son who is black and the same age. I cried in the car while I watched him and then I felt guilty for crying because I’m not the one suffering. I’m the one with a son who the cops don’t want to kill.

Parents know what worry feels like. That soul-crushing anxiety that wakes us in the night like ninjas ready to battle and destroy anything trying to harm our children. The worry that keeps our heart beating fast and our mind racing. We worry about molesters, child predators, tornadoes, car wrecks, drunk drivers, cancer, drugs, bullies, school pressure, eating disorders, terrorism, depression, mental illness and so on. It’s terrifying to be a parent.

But you know what I don’t worry about? What has never crossed my mind? What has never woken me in the night sweating?

That a police officer will shoot my son. That a police officer will fail not only to protect my son, but put him in harm’s way. That is mother fucking privilege. 

On those occasions when I wake from sleep, worrying about terrorism or tornadoes hitting my children, my cortisol rises. My heart rate speeds up. My blood pressure soars. My organs suffer. And then I reassure myself that everything is ok, that we are safe, that we have resources, that we have money, that WE will be ok…and I go back to sleep. My cortisol lowers, my heart rate slows down and my blood pressure decreases. My organs are healed. When a person is consistently worried, when a person is consistently inundated with trauma-with images of people who look just like their children being murdered in cold blood, their cortisol doesn’t lower. Their heart rate stays up. Their blood pressure continues to soar. Their organs continue to suffer.  I had a black friend tell me once that being black felt like “their insides were like a car that had the gas pedal revved at all times”. I don’t feel that way. I don’t spend my life, my days on this planet feeling that way. Why? Because I’m white.

And today I find myself at a loss for words. And let’s not forget, being “at a loss for words” after two more African-American men are murdered is in itself a fucking privilege. I can be “at a loss for words” because I don’t have to sit my son down tonight and warn him about the dangers of sitting in a car while black; walking down the street in a hoodie while black; being stopped for a broken tail light while black.

And if that isn’t the definition of privilege, I don’t know what is.

Dear self of 2016,

First and foremost, you are doing a great job.

You spend countless nights tossing and turning, worrying that you aren’t doing enough, that you aren’t making enough, that you simply aren’t…enough. You worry that the day flew by and that you never stopped to be in it…to relish in it. You worry that your babies are growing up and that the one job you have ever truly loved with all your heart-being a mother-, will be over soon. You worry that you yelled too much and loved too little. You worry that you failed. Again. And again. And again.

You worry that you aren’t where you “thought you would be” in life. That at 33, you would have been bigger and better and more impressive. That you would be this perfect package of patient mother, skinny wife and impressive professional. You long for the days of the past. “If only” you think. “If only I could go back to being first married…to being pregnant…to having babies…to having toddlers…to having…”. You are haunted by “if only’s”. Your stomach lurches and your heart races at the idea that you are getting older. That your kids are getting older. That your parents are getting older. You wonder where the time went. And then you hate yourself for falling into that trap. Somehow acknowledging it makes it real. You know where the time went. It went to long walks and snuggles and diapers and stomach viruses and kisses and absolutely perfect moments and absolutely horrible moments and zoo trips and beach trips, and pediatrician visits, and car rides and silly songs and silly faces and nighttime routines and bath time. It went to changing seasons and to holidays. Those moments that you miss so dearly and that you long for, those moments are LIFE. And right now Anna? THIS is life. And while you roll around in your bed at night, worrying about what was and what will be, you are literally, literally fucking missing what IS. What IS RIGHT NOW.

So hear me. You are doing a good job. You are enjoying the day. You are fun and spontaneous and silly with your children in a way that your mother was. And her mother was. You are working out, you are eating well, you are enjoying your children and loving them and loving your husband. More than anything, you are trying. You are putting in the work. And while you may suffer at the surface with depression and anxiety and fear, in the deepest corners of your body, you are genuinely, profoundly happy. You are doing well at work. And if you aren’t where you thought you would be, that is fucking OK. Because there are no rules about where you “should be”. And if there are, they are stupid and bullshit. You are where you are-where you are supposed to be-doing what you are doing and on some level, what you are supposed to be doing. Believe that. Be ok with that. More than anything Anna, be here now. Be here now. Be here in the good, be here in the bad, be here in the “I won’t survive this” as much as you are here in the “I’ve never been happier”. Because this right here is life. And it’s yours to live.

You are enough.

And another year goes by. 365 days.

One year ago, I wrote a post “celebrating” the fact that I have had type 1 diabetes for 20 years. This week, it becomes 21 years. And it’s made me reflect on what the word “chronic” means. Chronic illness, chronic sadness, chronic pain. If you’ve never suffered a chronic condition, you have no idea what it does to the body and to the mind. To your view of the world, much less your view of the day in front of you. It eats at you like a fungus. Some days, you forget it is there and for just a moment you feel normal. And then the next day, with no warning at all, it starts to nibble away at your hope, your faith. You view the day as a challenge, as something you just need to get through, as opposed to something you celebrate and relish. Getting out of bed feels impossible. Smiling, talking, interacting with the outside world feels inconceivable.

And it doesn’t necessarily show to the outside world. Your friends and your family can’t see your chronic illness. People are often shocked when they see my pump for the first time, or observe a dramatic low blood sugar incident. In some ways, that makes the struggle easier because I can hide, I can pretend, and most importantly, I can blend in. Other days, it makes it harder. I look at my husband or my sister or my friends and I want to scream, “you have no fucking idea how hard this is. you will never understand what this feels like.” But I don’t, because at the end of the day, it is mine. And it has been now for 21 years.

A week or so ago, another Facebook post came out about how “close” researchers are to finding a cure for type 1 diabetes. Those of us with the disease know how this feels. We’ve learned to curb our excitement. We know these are more often than not, empty promises. Don’t get me wrong, there aren’t words to describe my  appreciation for these brilliant researchers. But I have also had this disease for most of my life. I can no longer remember a time when I didn’t prick my finger, or calculate carbohydrates, or suffer through a debilitating episode of high or low blood sugar. This disease of mine is as much a part of me as my left arm or my ankle or my eyes. That, that right there is the definition of “chronic”. My disease reaches back into my earliest memories and taints basketball games, sleepover parties and hospital stays. My disease reaches in front of me, intertwined with my children growing up, going to college and growing old with my husband.

And yet these times of desperation are episodic. They come and they go. And on the other side is something much nicer. When the episode concludes, and I wake in my bed and the sun is shining and my heart is healed, a perspective that very few in life are granted emerges. The blessing of a day in which everything works. A day where I don’t have a migraine, my blood sugar is steady, my anxiety and depression in check, and I am reminded what a beautiful life I have been given. The two children that I fought for and that make every finger prick and every injection and every sobbing cry worth it hold my hand and tell me “You is a good mommy”. And I emerge a better version of myself. My skin is thick and my resolve to survive is stronger. I feel better than my disease. I feel stronger than my disease. It doesn’t own me, rather I own it.

And I know I can conquer it, if not today than tomorrow.

So it’s a new year. 2016. And yesterday, David Bowie died. The picture above is said to be the last picture ever taken of him. It was taken only days before his death. I can’t stop looking at this picture. I have stared at his face for what feels like hours. Man, that’s how you want to go right? Irresistibly cool. Self-assured. And absolutely fucking happy.

So what does David Bowie’s death and that picture have to do with a blog about raising twins? Honestly, I wasn’t sure when I began typing this entry and I don’t know that I will be once I’ve reached the end.

The truth is, I feel lost. I had two weeks off of work over the holidays and I spent, literally, every single day with my 3 year-old twins. And it was absolute bliss. Going into it, I thought for sure I would want to rip my hair out by day two. But it just wasn’t like that. We went on adventures, we lounged and watched movies, we made paper dolls, and played hide and go seek in the backyard, and collected worms and wrapped presents and ate cake icing. And I felt so utterly fulfilled.

I went back to school because I knew I wanted to change careers, but moreover because I wanted my children to be proud of me. To brag on their “working mother” at school. But those two weeks made me question everything. I am inundated daily by blog posts and by Facebook links that tell me “they grow up fast” and “it goes by in a flash”. It’s true. Time is racing by. Who I was in college feels like a distant relative. My high school self feels like a complete stranger. And my childhood? Wow. So why then do I choose to spend days away from them working at a job that pales in comparison to what I have with my two perfect, beautiful, incredible children? I honestly don’t know.

And so I feel lost. Life is short. Life is scary. Life is utterly unpredictable. One minute you’re here, the next you’re gone. And we know that to be true. We hear it every place that we turn. So what do we do while we are here?

Because the goddamn truth is that I cannot have it all. If I spend my days with my children, I can say goodbye to the profession. And if I keep on the way I’m keeping on, I will miss everything that matters. The minutes, the hours, the days that go like a flash. With my loves. Today I saw my children for two hours. Two out of twenty-four hours. And when I got home, my head hurt, I was exhausted and irritated.

What the hell?

Look back at that picture. It’s a face of no regrets. A face of satisfaction and contentment.

We should all strive to walk our last days on this earth in that manner.

Baby books tell you about sore nipples, sleepless nights, and colic. They tell you that your life will change forever. That your relationship with your partner will never be the same. That you can say goodbye to your free time forever.

But what they don’t tell you about, is the way in which your heart will change. The way in which your insides-who you are and how you breathe and how you survive each day, will also change profoundly.

I dropped my three year old twins off at school for the first time today. Up until now, they have been with a nanny at home. It started that way because they were premature and I was in school and at the time and it made sense. I wish that it still made sense. As I turned to walk out of the building this morning, I literally gasped for air as my throat became filled with sobs. I held it together (somewhat) until I got in my car. Then I proceeded to cry loudly and intensely for forty minutes. I sat in my parking lot at work for another twenty minutes trying to pull myself together. In all my life, I have never felt such intense emotion about anything. Of course I love my family and my husband to the end of the earth. But with my children, it’s different. It’s a love that extends through my body and into my toes and fingers and to the end of each of my hairs. It is a love that is so heavy and so deep that as I sit here typing this, I feel like a thousand bricks have been stacked on top of my heart. Nobody warned me about this. This…this incredible but painful love is what’s hardest. This vulnerability is what wakes me in the night. And I don’t know how to handle it.

Because here’s the truth. I am terrified for them to grow up. For them to leave me. Having my twins is the single greatest thing I’ve ever done with my life. It brings me a happiness and a contentment that is indescribable. Literally indescribable. And today it felt like the umbilical cord was being cut all over again. Like they were separating even more from me. And what’s more painful, is that I know that there is no answer or solution to this pain. Children grow up. They leave. They have families of their own. My mother says that parenthood is the one job in which you are working to be fired.

And right now I don’t want to be fired.

To the baby bird and the littlest peach,

You will turn three years old on Monday. Is it hard to believe? Yes, in some ways it very much is. In others, it seems just right. Three years. 1,095 days with you on this earth. With me. The world in which you were born in to is confusing and terrifying at times. Just yesterday a young man opened fire in Oregon and killed seven people. Seven people who once were children-who at one time celebrated their third birthday. I fear for you in this world and I long for the days in which you lived inside my body, where I could keep you safe.

The night you were born was electrifying. The night before was your daddy’s birthday and we celebrated with dinner out. That night I couldn’t sleep. My body ached, my skin burned, my ankles and wrists were swollen and throbbing. I knew that you wanted out. I felt you pushing your way through. We had a doctor’s appointment the next morning (October 5th) at 9am with the perinatologist. I waddled in wearing black stretchy pants and a giant tee-shirt. It was hot outside and I forced myself to walk up the flight of stairs as opposed to taking the elevator. Upon entering our doctor’s office, I glared at him and said “they want out. there is absolutely no way they are staying in until 37 weeks”. I was 33 weeks that day. He replied “It’s amazing what your body will do when the safety of your children is at stake”. Your daddy jumped up and stood in front of me, fearing I would rip this man’s eyeballs out, and said “Doctor, she is in bad shape, let’s check her blood pressure”. Soon thereafter, this idiot realized I was showing signs of preeclampsia and he immediately admitted me into the hospital. We weren’t sure when you were coming, but we knew it would be soon.

At 10:00pm that night, my OBGYN came in and said flatly “Sweetheart, these babies are coming tonight. You need to call your husband and tell him we go into surgery in half an hour”. I remember exactly how I felt. I was so profoundly aware that you would both be physically in this room, in this world in just a few hours. I would see you, I would meet you, I would finally have you.

While I waited for your daddy to get there (damn Braves game traffic almost made him miss it), I stood in the bathroom alone thinking about the gravity of what was soon to happen-of what I was about to become. I called my mother who said “You can do this. There are things that you cannot do but this is not one of those things. You-you specifically-can do this”. It made all the difference in the world.

Your daddy got there in time and we wheeled into surgery just before 11pm. I received my epidural and immediately felt nothing below my waist. Movies imply that epidurals make you loopy and silly but they don’t. I was as present and aware as I have ever been. Your daddy said I had never looked more beautiful. I didn’t believe him.

Several minutes later, the doctor began rocking my body back and forth. It felt like there was a volcano inside my stomach ready to erupt. I knew it was coming. And then I felt it. I felt elbows and feet and shoulders-body parts that I had felt inside of me everyday for the past several months-move through and out of my body. And in just an instant, I heard my baby boy enter the world.

There are not words suitable to describe how I felt.

I looked at your daddy and we knew it was you. When I thought I couldn’t feel anything more, that I couldn’t possible love anything else as immediately or completely as I did in that split second, the doctor began pulling my baby girl through my body. My sweet girl, you were so much smaller than your brother, my tiny little peach. I felt your fingers and the small shape of your head as it vacated my body. And then I heard you cry. I heard you separate from me and breathe in life for the first time. It was utterly and completely perfect.

What came next was hard. You both stayed in the hospital for several weeks. Daddy and I came everyday. And every second that I sat with you, I loved you more than the second before.

As we prepare to celebrate three years…more than one thousand days with my little birds, I want to thank you for choosing me. God knows that getting you was a painful and difficult battle. In my darkest hours, when I dreamed of holding you or feeling you move inside of me, I gritted my teeth through the tears and the anger and the doubt and kept going because I knew, I just knew that you were out there in the universe somewhere, just waiting to be mine.

Happy birthday little bird.

Happy birthday little peach.

-Mommy

If you have children, you have inevitably been asked by an older relative, a friend from your past, or a kind of annoying neighbor, “Where has the time gone?!”

As a mother of almost 3 year-old-twins, this question irks me. You may have noticed this if you read my blog regularly-as I have written about the passage of time often. I struggle to “be in the moment”. I imagine we all do somewhat, but for me, I find myself obsessing over what I used to have, what used to be. I long for the days in which my twins were newborn babies, smelling softly of milk and laundry detergent…all the while ignoring the fact that I never slept, fought incessantly with my husband and rarely left the house.

Regardless, I think it is safe to say that every mother mourns the passage of time with her children. It’s a deep ache that can sometimes be shrugged away, but one that waits for us in the pit of our stomachs, ready to be ignited by yet another Facebook comment or text message that says “Wow! Your children grew up!”

Because of course, time is time. It isn’t technically any different today than it was when I was six or sixteen or twenty-six. Sixty seconds is still a minute. But with kids, the days are so full and fly by so quickly that it’s easy to feel as though you are operating in fast forward mode. Further, their physical and intellectual growth is so pronounced in the early years that one day you have a baby and the next you have a child. And that’s really really hard for a mother to accept. Because every second that races by is one less second that we are needed. Motherhood is the only job in which you are working to be fired. Think about that. The late hours, the worry, the physical and mental exhaustion are all in an attempt to be, one day, put out of a job. One day they will leave my house and move into a dorm, or an apartment or a home and family of their own. And that is devastating.

And yet it is simultaneously exciting and incredible. Ah the paradox of motherhood continues.

So I guess I would say this: Just as you are struggling each day to “Be Here Now”, so am I. When you comment on how much my child has grown, how they’ll be walking down the aisle any day now, how close we are to the end, remember that we mothers are already acutely aware of this fact. Just as you were when your kids were young. We are already in mourning. We are already trying to cling on to a speeding train.

We are already terrified of being fired.