Three Years

I told J last night that I don’t remember much about their birth day except for the hours leading up to the birth. It was a final appointment before the c-section scheduled for the 13th, but my blood pressure had again risen to dangerous levels. Waiting for J to come home, the check-in, the nurse’s pep talks and even the moment that the needle passed through my spine were all memories that are still crystal clear to me. The haze after the births was just that - an incoherent bunch of fragmented scenes, stolen because of the morphine/magnesium sulfate cocktail. The clearest memories that I have of their birth day is of me waking up in the dark and impersonal L&D room, J by my side and an ornery nurse saying, “Well, do you want them or not?” It wasn’t until a couple of days later, when it was just the four of us and the bright September sun was warming my Audrey, yellow with jaundice, that I grasped the magnitude of the moment. She was getting her first tan and J was basking in the pride of fatherhood, exclaiming that he was the best swaddler in the Midwest and holding up a perfectly packaged Maggie for me to admire. I am a mother; we are parents.

Three years later, I still try to rock them, only now it’s an ongoing joke and Maggie babbles like a baby while Audrey coos and playfully pats her head. We hold conversations and have arguments. I am their best friend and the thorn in their side. We have grand adventures and discuss silly daydreams. They learn and they teach me. Every day. Sometimes, when I look at them, I try so hard to see the full cheeks of infancy. When I breathe deeply into their hair, I try to smell the scent of newborn life. But instead, I’m met with the realization that they grow closer to adulthood than I am comfortable with. Their emerging independence and growing limbs reveal the little girls that they are now and the young women they will become. They are running full speed ahead and I am forever chasing them and praying that they don’t leave me behind.

Happy birthday, my sweet Beans.