Day Fourteen

Carmen sent me a text yesterday with a picture of my oldest child Jake, when he was a baby. I went to school with Carmen but we got instantly close when she walked into the hospital room right after I had Jake. I remember sitting in the hospital bed with a deer-in-headlights look on my face, and she shyly walked in trying to avert her eyes from my ginormous exposed milk bags. Jakey was lying beside me all swaddled up, squirming around for food and I stared at him like "now what?" And Carmen stared back at me like, "now what?"

I'll never forget that moment.

I really didn't know what to do with my huge new African boobs. I obviously figured it out as Jake got the hugest chubby cheeks ever. I couldn't go anywhere with him without someone commenting on the size of his baby face. He's 12 now, and would probably "Black Ops" me upside the head if he knew I was writing about him like this. Oops.

I fell in love with Jake. My sister Tracey was over and we were sitting on the family room floor watching Jake in his exersaucer. I was staring at him with doe eyes and she said to me, "you're in love, aren't you? The way you're looking at him..." And I was like, "ya... I'm in love."

I was the youngest child by 8 years and so in a lot of ways I was a combination of youngest and only child: the recipe for the most self-absorbed human on the planet. But when I had Jake, everything changed; I lived and breathed for him. And then when Freddy and Katie were born I was continually flabbergasted at how I'd be able to love them as much as I loved Jake, and yet I could, of course. The capacity of parent-love is never-ending and quite God-like in its characteristics. Mind-blowing love.

I didn't even know I liked kids until I had them. I think I maybe held one baby before I held Jake?...something like that. But once he was in my belly, all I could think about was every breath that I took in would be for him, not me.

When Carmen sent me that baby photo of him yesterday, I lost it and I told her so. I cried those gut-wrenching sobs, the ones that scare me a bit. The really loud, noisy, "I might throw up because it's an exorcism cry" sob. I grieved my old life, the one that had soft edges, rounded corners.

I'd hold my babies on my squishy lap and read them books. I'd kneel down with them and play Thomas the Train with them for hours on end until I found out that the blue paint on the wooded trains were toxic, at which point I self-loathed for letting Freddy suck on them to self-soothe his incoming molars.

I didn't have to worry about divorce papers. I didn't have to wonder when I'd get my 15 minute coffee break, or how I'd cope through a lonely night. I had different worries, sure, and maybe even bigger ones,  but they were different. They were coated in baby powder and breast milk, and my day was dictated by whether or not one of them fell asleep in the car and ruined nap time.

I grieve my old life, I do. My mom will attest to the fact that I was born to be a mommy. She could see it when I held my babies, when I danced and moved and lived among them. I embrace the changes in my life, yes... but it's important that I go through the process of moving forward. They're still and always will be my babies, and if anything my love for them has intensified and grown into new uncharted territory that I didn't even know existed in my cold little heart.

But there's something about those innocent baby cheeks, depending on my arms, my chest, my love. I'll never let go, but I will move forward, allowing the sprinkle of baby powder to soften up the edges of my heart.