"I buckle my boy into his car seat and let myself weep behind the steering wheel. I feel guilty as the tears fall, wishing this hadn’t happened on my daughter’s birthday—wishing it hadn’t happened at all. I regret taking the pregnancy tests as early as I did, knowing that a bit of patience would have saved me from my present pain. Now, instead of reveling in my daughter’s birthday, I am blubbering in my car, grasping for bits of joy as a wonderful secret slips through my fingers.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Visits to the orchard used to mean crunching brown leaves into the dank ground, a favorite sweater, hot cider to warm hands. But here in the desert, we race through breakfast, arriving before 8 a.m. to beat the lines and the heat. We pack sun hats, slather sunscreen, and carry extra water bottles. The cider comes frozen, and we press our cheeks against the sweating half gallons when we need to cool off. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The kids' growth is obvious; they are taller, shorter hair, faces more angular. Their growth is also measured by the words they can read, the math problems they can complete, and the facts they can tell me about the solar system, dinosaurs, and the oceans. And then there's their teacher: in the first picture she is the sleep-deprived, caring for an infant, stressed-out, 2020-version of herself. In today's picture she looks more refreshed; the baby is a year old now and a great sleeper. There are still hard decisions to be made, but she's moving confidently forward in her choices rather than ruminating on the alternatives. This year at home with Mom might be a little blip on the timelines of my kids' lives, but the bonus time with them has been an unexpected blessing (and challenging time of refinement) for me.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
"A few months after my daughter lost her first tooth, out came a second tooth, which led to a second visit from the Tooth Fairy and a pair of milk teeth in my jewelry box. 'I don't really know why I'm keeping them,' I confessed to my husband. 'I just can't bring myself to throw them away.' I laughed, knowing that someday my daughter would probably tell me to trash them anyway, just as I had done with my own mom. Would it be any easier to part with them when she's an adult? or when I have a jewelry box full of baby teeth from three kids? What was I going to do with all of these baby teeth?"⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
