My oldest friend in the world M had her second baby, a boy, this past December. And when he was born, I was so excited. It added to my excitement that he was born on Husband’s birthday. Also, it amazed me that M now had a girl and a boy. As a mom of only one sex, I continue to be blown away when someone has one of each.

Anyway, he was born before Christmas and I told M on the phone that I was going to pick a day and fly to Chicago and meet this little man. Pictures are great, but nothing beats holding a baby in your arms and smelling that baby smell. So, it was a plan. But then this thing happened. This thing called Time. It passed. And passed. Months flew by. And here we are, in May, and I have not met this boy.

I decided to put an end to this. Booked a flight. I am going solo (and will meet up with Sister C in Chicago) and will be there less than 24 hours, but I will get to see M and meet her new addition. It will be a quick little visit, but I am so excited. It’s time.

And I don’t want to leave my man or my girls, I never do, but this is important to me and I will be home soon. I’ve been thinking a lot (and writing a lot) about friendship and how marriage and family affects and informs the bonds between friends and I am realizing more than ever how vital it is for us to maintain our friendships, to celebrate these happy things, these little creatures who are arriving in the world.

And so. I am off.

(Yay!)

P.S. – Yes, that is indeed the Jess Rizzuti bag I’ve been swooning over. Love.

Do you enjoy visiting your friends & their new bundles? How has marriage/family affected (or not affected) your friendships? Have you taken any super quick trips lately?

I just chopped by hair. More accurately, a genius named Aki just chopped my hair. And I was scared to do it because my hair had gotten so so long, but I went for it. Do it, I told him. And he did. We both smiled.

Change is good. It’s important to realize this, and remember it. I think it’s so easy to get used to things, to grow attached to the status quo, to tell ourselves stories about how everything is the way it is, and perhaps should be. But the reality is that it is often up to us. To decide. To take a risk. To do what we can to feel lighter.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what my lovely friend Laura Munson said last week. About how it is downright foolish to hinge our personal happiness on things that fall outside our control. I keep thinking about how fundamentally true this is. And yet it is hard to avoid doing this, isn’t it? It takes discipline to narrow our focus, to train our eyes and hearts and minds on those things we can do, and affect. It is so easy to slip, to feel like we can change the world and other people, that we can play architect and build the Life we want with some kind of precision, that we can play puppeteer and have the characters in our scenes move just so. We can’t.

What we can do is think thoughts. And ask questions. And dream dreams.

And cut our hair.

I cut my hair because it is almost summer. Because it had been forever and the ends were getting split and fried. I cut my hair because I wanted a change. Because I wanted to feel lighter. And here’s the thing: I do. I feel lighter. Because, quite literally, I said goodbye to probably a foot of my hair, but also because I did something for me, something I could do, something that was totally, wonderfully within my control.

I sit here. In a Starbucks in the morass of midtown. My phone is charging. And so, in a way, am I. I am the blond girl sitting on a radiator by the shelf display of fancy teas. I am the girl squinting into a little screen. I am the girl with the new, happy bob. I sit here, awash in anonymity, thankful for this sunny Tuesday, and the chance I have in this moment to write these words. I could be irritated by the cacophonous construction outside, the fierce sound of a nearby drill, but I am not. I choose not to be.

I feel lighter. Already. Again.

{Speaking of lighter, I am now off to get blonded. Wading in the shallow end today and it feels kind of good…}

What hairstyle are you sporting these days? Are you afraid of change or do you embrace it? What do you do to feel lighter?

Some things are complicated. Some things are not.

Saturday, Husband and I took the girls to Turtle Pond in Central Park. Because of busy schedules and bad weather, we hadn’t been there in a while and as soon as we settled in on our picnic blanket, I felt my smile come. My big, surrender smile. My happy-as-can-be smile.

We brought bagels. Juice and milk boxes for the kids. Coffee for us parents. We bought a delectable waffle at the waffle truck parked nearby. We sat together and nibbled on our goodies, but before long, the girls were off. They clustered with some other kids to look over the fence at a particularly friendly Canada Goose.

The picked a lucky tree and ran circles around it. I hung back and snapped away, at the blur of my babies going round and round. Big Girl and Middle Girl have been picking matching outfits every Saturday morning and this time, they were studies in yellow and green, and they blended, and beautifully, with the backdrop. Their little sis, dressed by mom, kept up just fine.

You guys, they were so happy, so free. They frolicked, hair swinging and tangled, smiles enormous.

Husband and I hung back, on our blanket, on our little plot of earth, and watched them. He and I took turns shuttling Little Girl to the potty which was a way’s away. She refused to use the portable potty we brought.

It struck me then, and it strikes me now, how perfect Saturday morning was. I will be the first to admit that adulthood is a tricky thing, a world riddled with complexity and effort and exhaustion. But that morning? It was sweet and simple and green and good.

It was a morning where we were able to sit and savor and breathe and be. Where our little girls didn’t need to behave, but were free to chase each other and laugh loudly and be the silly and incredible little creatures they are.

On the way home, we stopped at the dock and looked over the railings into the water. And there they were, countless little turtles, shells peeking from the surface, saying hello. Oh, how the girls smiled.

And their smiles become our smiles, don’t they?

On the way home, we walked along a path and the girls veered right, took a sudden detour. They gathered around another tree, and began to climb it. They lost themselves in laughter and put on a show of silly faces and poses. We took a million pictures.

I will remember this morning. This simple Saturday morning in the middle of May. Really, there was nothing unique or spectacular about it. It was basic and beautiful, a humble stretch of time, but maybe that’s what was so lovely and jarring about it. That it was so profound in its purity. So small. So unsullied. So innocent. So ours.

Some things are complicated.

Some things are not.

Do you and yours have a happy place? Have you been overcome with simple family moments? What in your life is complicated and what is not?

Things were different when I was 25. I was in law school at Columbia. I was there not because I was particularly interested in the law per se, or practicing law one day, but because I loved school and felt law school was a “smart move,” a slam-dunk “door opener.” Anyway, I was there, in my 3L or final year, and I was happy. I liked law school. I liked my classmates and many of my professors. I found some of the work interesting. I particularly enjoyed Bar Reviews – Thursday nights spent swilling copious amounts of bad wine in sundry Upper West Side bars. Fun times. So hard to believe I will be attending my 10th law school reunion in a matter of weeks. Ah, Time.

Correction: Okay, so this is funny. I actually wasn’t in law school at all! Clearly, math is not my strong suit. Anyway, truth is I was in my first year of practicing at a law firm here in New York City. I was a litigation associate. It was a new, shiny, very interesting world. A world I knew would be a temporary stop. A world that ultimately inspired the setting in my first novel Life After Yes.

At 25, I was dating Husband and had been for two years. I remember my 25th birthday very well because I was expecting to get engaged. Believe me, I was not the type to daydream about a proposal or a princess dress, but Husband had asked my parents’ permission on a cruise months before and, well, Dad spilled the beans like three minutes later, and well, you could say that getting engaged was on my mind. I was not the only one who thought my birthday might be it. Well, it wasn’t. And, in retrospect, I’m happy that Husband waited – exactly one week – and proposed on a quiet night when I was absolutely expecting nothing.

At 25, I was innocent. I had yet to face real heartbreak or loss. Dad was alive and well. I was in this city, in school, surrounded by tons of friends and family and things were pretty simple. I studied enough to do well. I partied. I shopped. Interestingly, I did not think too far ahead. Yes, marriage was on my mind because I was with the man I wanted to marry and I knew there was a ring floating around somewhere, but I did not think about kids or family. (Husband would probably contest this as he swears I made him promise that he’d have three kids in the first two months of our relationship.) Also, at 25, I didn’t think too much about life’s biggies: Purpose, Meaning, Identity, Existence, etc. I wasn’t a totally shallow person, but I also wasn’t overly deep.

Here I am almost ten years later. I will turn 35 in October. And I find myself thinking about what advice I might give my 25-year-old self. Admittedly, this is also on my mind because my younger sister is around this age and is currently in that priceless process of figuring out what she wants to do. Anyway, I am thinking about all of this. And I even asked this question on Facebook the other day. And the responses were wonderful. So wonderful that I just had to write this post. See for yourself.

what advice would you give your 25-year-old self?

Start doing what you love NOW. (And calm down.)

Be strong. Be confident. Be kind. Be generous.

Get a real estate license. You can still write.

Don’t worry.

That boy is going to break your heart so stop chasing he isn’t worth it. Learn to travel by yourself because not everyone will be on the same page and you will learn far more about yourself than you ever thought you could. Weed your friend garden. Cut up the credit cards and work your butt off till they are all gone. It’s all just stuff anyway. (Those are just a few of the things I would tell my 25 year old self)

Never settle…whether it be a man, a job, a dream!

Focus on the now.

Worry less.

Don’t give up on your dreams because you’re worried about money.

Life gets better after 40. Really.

leave him. leave him now.

Travel. Really think about the career choice you make. Make mistakes. Fail. Volunteer to expand your own world. Read. Journal.

Stop trying to skip to
The last chapter to see how it ends. Life is like a good book. Savor every chapter. You’ll get to the ending soon enough.

Keep ALL the hot shoes. Every. Last. Pair.

Travel!

You know what’s weird? I’m at a place in my life where I think my 25 year old self could teach ME something (Like how to not care what others think. How to plan less and be fine with that. how to forge ahead blindly into my dreams!)

Career wise, money will follow when you do the thing you want to do and enjoy it. Don’t chase money.

Slow down.

Question everything. The people you think are in charge aren’t any closer to the truth than you are.

Start writing now Think about where you want to be in 10 years from now and what you want to be doing and always marry for love because to paraphrase Bette Davis and Stephen Stills life is a bumpy ride and you need to love the one you’re with.

Keep practicing Ashtanga with the dedication of your 35 year old self. It will keep you calm and grounded for everything to come. Take that trip to India!

That the grass is only greener on the other side because you’re not taking care of your own.
When you become a Mother, you’ll find out the answer to the question you constantly ask re: your parents: “what’s their problem?”
Oh and love your boobs now, cuz once motherhood hits, baby, they’re gone! Oh and make your Dad go to the doctor.

Drink less. You’ll want to remember all this fun stuff you’re doing.

Buy Apple stock.

No boy is worth that much stress. If he doesn’t call , let it go… on to the next.

You’ll find love. You’ll have kids. Now chill out and get a milkshake.

Break up with that loser boyfriend and move to Europe!

Don’t..DO NOT…cut your hair no matter how much you loved Winona Ryder’s pixie in Reality Bites. Especially don’t cut it at the mall.

Do exactly what you have been doing.

Never grow up.

Who were you at 25? What advice would you give your 25-year-old self? If you are 25-ish, what advice would you give your future self?

I hosted a Happier Hour with Laura Munson at my home last night. Laura is the author of This Is Not the Story You Think It Is; A Season of Unlikely Happiness and she came in all the way from Whitefish, Montana. Laura and I met in this ineffable ether of the online world, but became fast friends. As I introduced Laura last night to a crew of wonderful women, Husband, and one wonderful and witty Head Butler I explained that Laura and I first got to know each other during a phone call. I expected that call to be quick and efficient, ten minutes tops. I expected it to be a bartering of logistics, of date-setting. But, no. We talked and talked and talked. About life and love and writing. It came up that we had both lost our dads and that these losses had really shaped us, and our writing. We figured out that we both have family in Lake Forest, Illinois, that our late fathers are indeed buried in the same cemetery there. A haunting, and happy, connection.

I could go on and on about that call and the exchanges Laura and I have had since because they have been really deep, layered exchanges, but I don’t have the time. I am due to go on a field trip to a bagel store with Big Girl in just a bit. So, I must get to the point. This is something I don’t love to do, but here goes.

Laura sat in my big, black chair by our living room window. The 40+ of us in attendance gathered around her, some of us comfy on chairs, others of us plopped on the floor. But it didn’t matter where we sat because as soon as Laura began speaking – reading from her book, talking about her life and her writing and her Haven retreats – our surroundings faded away. They did for me, at least. I felt lost. The best kind of lost. Lost in questions and ideas and story. It is a privilege to feel this way.

Laura said so many terrific, challenging things. That we can choose how to react to suffering. That, very often, what we are seeking is right here within us. That pain is pain is pain; that we should allow ourselves to feel pain and “breathe into its groundlessness.” That we should think about doing what we love, what scares us.

For me, the biggest takeaway from the night was that we should all stop basing our happiness on things outside our control. She talked about how she wrote fourteen novels over the span of many years, novels that were not published. She realized (with the help of a therapist who sounds quite wise) that basing her happiness on whether she was published or not was foolish because this was not something she could control. Something that was within her control: going back to Italy with her 12-year-old daughter and visiting the family that she lived with during college. This was something that she had total control over and something that brought her tremendous joy.

I know I am rambling. That’s what I do. Particularly when I’m excited and intrigued and buzzing with thoughts. And I am all of these things. I sit here, in my booth, in my city, in my life, in my passion, and my mind is swirling with stuff, meaningful stuff, and I have Laura to thank for that.

After everyone left last night, we could have gone to bed. It was quite late and we were both tired. But we didn’t go to bed. We changed into our pajamas. We sat on my couch. And we talked. And talked. And talked. About these lives we are leading, these words we are writing and trying to write, these kids we are raising. After a while, prudence alighted and we cut ourselves off. Adjourned things. Said goodnight. But we could have talked all night.

And, yes, today I am tired and less-than-eloquent, but so be it. I am happy and inspired and thankful. I get to close this computer in a minute or two and go meet my girl and see how bagels are made. And then I get to travel back west and meet Laura for lunch. We are thinking French or Thai. We will sit there, at a little table at whatever restaurant we choose, and we will talk some more. About the big, hard, happy, real things. And I will thank her as I did endlessly last night, and here in this mess of a post. I will thank her for being her, for telling her story, for being an open book in an often closed world, for coming all of the way from Montana to be with us, and me.

I encourage you all to check out:

Laura’s site

Laura’s book

Laura’s Haven writing retreats

A very happy footnote:

I am thrilled to announce that I will be kicking of a West Coast branch of Happier Hours next month in Los Angeles with my lovely and talented friend and Rules of Inheritance author Claire Bidwell Smith. Claire was here in May for her own Happier Hour and it was then that we cooked up the idea of her bringing these wonderful events with her to the West Coast. That this is actually happening makes me smile and big. Big.

Okay, off to embrace this beauty of a day. Happy Thursday, all!

{Her first time in undies.}

I remember potty-training Big Girl. It was a process. It was a pain. We began before she was 2, introducing plastic potty paraphernalia around our home, placing her tiny diaper-less bottom on it from time to time, smiling our nervous and encouraging and totally clueless parental smiles, hoping for the best. At some point, we got serious about results and introduced the Jelly Bean Reward. This seemed to work. Our girl, clever one, would divide up her pees so as to receive more beans. This made us chuckle. More so in retrospect. And I remember that day at the playground when Big Girl was running around, her pink Pull-Up peeking out from the top of her expensive little jeans. With first kids, you buy impractical designer items. Anyway, this fellow mom at the playground started talking to me. She had an accent. Within thirty seconds, she was lecturing me on how Americans are weak when it comes to toilet-training. She said I was confusing my child by sending her out into the world with a diaper but expecting her to use the toilet at home. Rip it off and deal with some accidents, was the gist. Oddly, I listened, and by around 2.5, my girl was a pro. Okay, pro-ish.

With Middle Girl, things were different. She was so enamored by her older sis that she didn’t really need jelly beans. We doled them out, but she basically trained herself by her second birthday. She wouldn’t even wear a Pull-Up at night. She also insisted on a Big Girl Bed and dropped her nap. Anything to be like her hero.

And now. Little Girl. We joke that the poor child is being raised by wolves because, well, we let her do her thing a lot. We have given very little thought to choking on small toys, to baby-proofing. In the past several months, she’s expressed an interest in the potty, an interest that we’ve sorta humored, but not really. It’s just so much easier when they wear diapers, huh? Spoken by the mom of three. Point is that we haven’t pushed it. We’ve pretty much the opposite of pushed it.

But this weekend, she pulled her own diaper off in the crib. Middle Girl reported this and, yup, it was enough to get me out of bed. I put her on the potty and she peed. And then she continued to do this all weekend. She is so little and cute and she doesn’t even want to mess around with the pink plastic potty that has been passed down from her sisters (gross, I know). Nope, she wants the Big Potty and she can hoist her tiny self up there. She does proclaim each time “I no wanna fall in potty!” and, yes, that did happen but only once, but then she does her thing and then the big bonus is that she gets to flush. She is so proud of herself, this girl of mine.

And that’s that. She trained herself in a period of about 24 hours and now we are done with diapers. Just Pull-Ups for naps and night. This is amazing and sad, both at once. Because I love babies and my baby is getting big and doing her thing. But that is not the point of the post; I will write another post about my melancholy about the end of procreation and infancy. The point here is that sometimes things are easiest when we don’t push them, when we hang back and breathe and just let what’s going to happen happen.

I don’t think I need to tell you that this post isn’t just about potty-training. It is about life. Imagine how much we could do and accomplish and witness and enjoy if we stopped caring so much, sometimes cripplingly, if we stopped tangling ourselves in self-woven webs of systems and shoulds, of procedure and prudence, of effort and expectation. Imagine that, right?

Anyway, I am proud of my little cutie. How can I not be?

The Parenthood Question: How have your potty-training experiences been? Have your first kid and subsequent kid experiences been different?

The Life Question: Have you, at times, felt tripped up by what you should be doing? Have you glimpsed, at times, how seamlessly things can come together when you surrender just a bit?

I met Lauren Miller (then Lauren McBrayer) at Yale. Though she’s a bit younger, we were friends and had many friends in common and I always thought she was cool and smart. And she is. Fast-forward a few years. Lauren and I are kind of leading parallel lives (yup, pun intended). We both went to law school following college. We both chased our dream to write. We both have little girls now. We both, it seems, have a reverence for the silly and serious in life.

I saw Lauren a while back at a wedding in Miami. Lauren and my sister Ceara are good friends and this was the wedding of one of their Yale besties, whom I also adore. (Hi, S!) And, at this wedding, Lauren pulled me aside and told me something. Her smile was vast. I sold my book! she crooned, in a happy whisper. And I wasn’t surprised, at all, but oh was I thrilled for her. I knew what she was in for. I know what a day like today feels like.

And it is indeed today. Her pub day. Her debut novel PARALLEL is out in the world. And, trust, me it’s a good one. Cool and smart, just like Lauren. I had planned to whip up a detailed review full of gushing nuance, but alas, life is a bit nutty chez Rowley and that never quite happened. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from coming here today and telling you all about this fantastic book. I encourage you to pick up a copy.

If you would like to read a really beautiful review, of the breed I wish I had taken the time to write, click over to my friend Lindsey’s blog.

Congrats, Lauren! I hope you savor every bit of this very big day.

xoxo, ADR

About fourteen months ago, I wrote a post called Listen to Life. The post was a difficult one to write as it was about my Sister Ceara welcoming her little girl H who born with an ear condition called Bilaterial Microtia. Ceara wanted me to publish those words then, and I did, and the response was wonderful. Here we are, a year-plus later. Ceara and her family have since moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a transition about which Ceara herself mused in a wonderful guest post here.

In March, my little niece H turned one. She is a delectably chubby, developmentally normal, blue-eyed beauty. Thanks to the Bahas she wears (a pair of hearing aids on a headband), H has been able to hear and her speech has been evaluated as beyond the level of her chronological age! She’s a smart little cookie; not that I’m surprised. All of that said, it’s been a tough road for my sister and her family. Right around H’s first birthday (depicted above), Ceara wrote the following words about H’s birth. She asked me to share them today here, on the heels of Mother’s Day. I have no doubt you will find these words as brave and beautiful as I do. Please take a moment today to leave a comment. Doing so would mean a great deal to both Ceara and me. Hope you all had a great Mother’s Day!

one year in

by Ceara Donnelley

Not long ago I was a fairly typical sight on New York’s Upper West Side: weary and waddling mom-to-be pushing her first-born to and from preschool, at once full of and weighed down by life. That buzzy excitement that starts around the 37^th week was there, but unlike the first time around, so too was awareness of what was to come. My son’s birth, I’m told, was not entirely smooth. If you ask my husband, it was downright scary, but hormones and an epidural colluded to obscure the reality of events in the delivery room, and so my memories of my first labor are, on the whole, happy. There was pain, yes, and it would have been nice if R had not been “sunny side up,” and I could have gone without the oxygen mask and plummeting heart rate, and I really wish I had thought of something better to say at first glance of my firstborn than “Yikes, look at his conehead!” But in the end I had a story to tell and a healthy baby to hold, a sweet boy who latched like a champ and whose alien-shaped head normalized in mere days.

As my daughter’s due date approached, I had that keen maternal sense that this labor would follow a similar pattern. I was feeling the same early contractions, real contractions, that I’d had with R; they would come and go, which I now knew likely meant she was face up, the position preventing her head from properly engaging in my pelvis. I fixated on this possibility, that she might not flip like my OB promised she would. I researched yoga poses and herbs and spent the last 48 hours of my pregnancy prone on a giant exercise ball, determined to make her move. When time finally came to head to the hospital I was fairly calm. My husband, N, and I giggled at the front desk and I was admitted to the delivery floor right away. I downloaded a new book, The Starboard Sea, and read half of it overnight while N dosed on a chair in the corner. As I read and labored I watched my contractions rise and fall on the monitor strapped to my enormous belly. Aside from a fairly excruciating hour-plus delay between my request for an epidural and the anesthesiologist’s arrival, it wasn’t that bad. My OB, tall and cool, frank and funny, arrived in the morning and casually announced I was ten centimeters and ready to push. While we waited for the nurse, she and N and I talked hockey, and raising kids in New York, and whether you could reasonably combine those two things.

The nurse arrived and I started pushing. Within what felt like seconds, she was out. It was all so swift and smooth, the pushing. She was indeed face up like her brother, but my body had figured out how to handle this kind of arrival (or departure, really). Until writing this, I didn’t remember that I did, in fact, cry when she was born. Before I knew. There were tears of happiness at having had my baby girl. I did not call her a conehead.

After throwing the baby on my chest the nurses whisked her away to be cleaned up and checked by the peds team, on hand because she, too, scared us with an erratic heart rate. I told N to go over to her and tell me what he saw, what she looked like. He was the first to notice. Or, more likely, the first to say it. “There’s something up with her ears.” I chided him, the conehead comment fresh in my mind. “Oh N, she just squeezed through a birth canal. I’m sure they’re just smushed.” “No,” he said. “There’s something wrong.”

Within minutes N was in the corner on his iPhone, diagnosing our daughter before anyone else had the chance to. Microtia, he said. Atresia. It meant nothing to me. The nurse brought her to me, and I held my baby girl, still disbelieving that anything was actually wrong. Before I looked, really looked, at her ears, I sincerely thought that if anything was wrong, surely they’d be able to fix it before it was time to bring her home from the hospital. But then, I looked. There wasn’t just something wrong with her ears—she barely had ears. More alarmingly, there were no ear canals. Just two little peanuts on either side of a perfect little head, so perfect on its face that it seemed to mock the malformations on its sides. I grew quiet.

I’ve come to see the way I handled this news, both initially and in time, as part of a pattern of how I deal with trauma more generally. I did not cry right away. I was stunned, and my OB and the nurses knew it. I didn’t hear a medical term for H’s condition from anyone other than N in that delivery room. My OB said she had seen this once before, in one ear, and that it was fine, just fine, the boy could hear, he was fine. At that point, though I had clearly seen that my baby did not have ear canals, I hadn’t even thought of hearing loss—probably as good an indication of any of the fog I was in. No, that easy logical leap, that without ears, without ear canals, it might be difficult to hear, had not yet been made. All I knew was this baby of mine did not come out how she was supposed to.

My phone buzzed in the bed beside me, my sisters and mom eager to hear my tired but elated voice announce she was here. My OB cleaned me up, the nurse left to tend to other moms, and N went to secure the private room we would now need more than ever. It was not until I was alone with her, with H, that I shed my first tears of grief, and guilt. In those first minutes of H’s life, I clutched her and breathed her in and told her I loved her (and I did), but I also looked at her with devastation and bewilderment. When the nurse came back in, a wonderful woman with whom I’d so recently been exchanging pre-labor banter, I tried to blink back my tears and smile. I was so ashamed that she had found me crying over my imperfect baby, over something I somehow still thought was a superficial defect. She didn’t say a thing, but I saw in her eyes that she knew my tears were not happy ones. That she didn’t try to reassure me was my first clue that this was very real.

Somewhere I found the strength to call my sister, Aidan. I think I had already sent her a confusing string of texts that began before I knew there was something wrong but then took a turn. She answered with her crisis voice—a combination of concern and resolve. “There’s something wrong with her ears,” I told her. “But she’s okay, right?” “Yes, I think so, but she doesn’t … have them.” “But she’s okay?” she asked, then stated, over and over. And in retrospect, that was the right question—because she was okay, and Aidan might have been the one to make me first start realizing that. I rattled off the stats—8 lbs 5 ozs, 19 ½ inches, 9.9 Apgar score. I know now this was no small thing. H was the beginning of my education.

***

Those days in the hospital are somehow both hazy and crystal clear. Hazy when I look back casually; clear when I stop to remember, as I am doing now. I suppose that is my mind’s way of protecting me from reliving the pain and grief and guilt I felt when H was first born. It has done the same thing with the months my dad was on hospice, and the week before his death, and the death itself. If I will myself to, I can remember. I don’t often do that, though. I have learned I am a forward-thinker. I am resilient, a therapist once told me. It is a good thing, for the most part. But every once in a while I like to dip back into the memories, the wrenching sadness. The seeds of some of the most beautiful parts of life are in there.

***

When H was born, I thought I knew a thing about hardship, about raw deals. My father’s death had shattered the illusion of such thing as a charmed life. When cancer claimed him at age 66, I did not rail against God or the universe. I chalked it up, as he did, to our being biological organisms, susceptible to the unfeeling whims of nature. To some that is a terrifying explanation of illness and death, but to him and me it brought comfort. There is little we can do to prevent, in my dad’s words, Momma Nature from raining on our parade. So, there is no point worrying too much about the rain; when it comes, scramble for cover, or try to enjoy the shower.

In a way I am only now beginning to grasp, in an utterly random but profoundly meaningful way, my father’s death prepared me for H’s birth. When H was born, I did not curse the universe. I did, I admit, curse the odds—how did this thing, this 1 in 20,000 thing, happen to us? But I didn’t dwell too much on that, and I didn’t spend time blaming myself, as everything I read suggested, by way of telling me not to, I should. That’s not to say that I embraced this new reality in some Zen way. I had my moments, times of solitude, or with N, when I was wracked with grief and heaving with sobs. Little things pierced my armor: the boy at the pediatrician’s office innocently commenting to his mother that that baby hadn’t grown her ears yet; the thought of my daughter having to wear a headband every day of her life until she was at least five, and probably older (before H I hated headbands on babies, favoring the classic barrette for girls if they had enough hair to hold it); the realization that every time I held my infant daughter, hugged or cradled her, I’d have to either move her Baha hearing aid around on said headband, or tolerate and subject her to squeals of feedback.

But other little things sustained me. My son, not yet three, noticing his baby sister’s ears for the first time: “Ooooh, look at her baby toes! And look at her baby fingers! And look at her baby ears! … but they’re different.” “Yes, babe, they are different.” “Oh.”—and not another word about them since, except to ask when the other babies he sees are going to get their Bahas. Actually, it is often my son’s delight in his baby sister that sustains me. The way he mimics the patterns our speech therapist has taught us to use with H: “Ba ba ba ball! Ca ca ca cat! Meow!” The way he talks to her in an extra loud voice during their brother-sister baths, when she can’t wear her Bahas: “BABY SISTER! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!?” (She can, her smile shows). The way he wrestles with her just as he would with any baby sister—or brother, for that matter—squealing Bahas be damned. The way he sees her as she is: an adorable, spirited, sometimes annoying little sister. Who is completely perfect in her own way.

And, of course, H sustains me. Really, it was she who did from the very beginning. In the hospital I felt panicky and unsettled unless she was close, reminding me that in almost every way she was just like any other newborn who needed to nurse and sleep and be held. And as H has grown and developed over this first year of her life, I have learned that if ever I feel that rising tide of worry about what all this will mean for us, for her, I need only go to her to know she is okay. I can tell by the uncommonly wise look in her big blue eyes, by the way she dances to her big brother’s songs, by her clear and strong voice saying “Mamama” and “Dadada” and “Aaaaht” (cat) and “Bubu” (bottle), all before her first birthday. Aidan was right—she is okay. And so are we.

***

At the risk of sounding preachy and trite, what I have learned this past year is that anyone who has a healthy baby—myself included, twice over—is truly lucky, a firsthand witness to nature’s most amazing miracle. Before H was born, I was one of the many people who turn away from disability and defect. I guess I didn’t have any reason not to. When I was pregnant and had an opportunity to make a wish, I did so nominally for a healthy baby, but secretly for a cute and smart baby. If I do this all over again, I’m still going to want a cute and smart baby; who doesn’t? But if I get a healthy one, and by healthy I mean able to breathe and eat and grow and learn, in whatever form, at whatever pace—I will feel genuinely lucky. I will thank Momma Nature for her latest miracle.

For more information on Microtia/Atresia, click here.

For more information on Baha, click here.

Beautiful, no? Any thoughts or reactions? Are you willing to share bits of your own birth stories here?

I decided that there is a priceless Mother’s Day gift all of us moms can give to ourselves. Curious? Then click over and read my latest piece on the Huffington Post. And feel free to share it, like it, or leave a comment however tiny. Perhaps silly, but I get kind of anxious about posting at HuffPost because I’ve gotten some less-than-kind comments there before. I know, I know. I should grow a thick skin; easier said than done, right?

Have a great weekend, all. And again: Happy Mother’s Day!

{My babes. Summer 2012.}

We humans are wired, it seems, to label. We like boxes. Species. Types. They make us feel safe, organized, in control. But the thing is, there are some things that defy categorization, diagramming. Big, important things like, say, parenthood.

What kind of mom am I? What’s interesting is that after six years of doing this gig, I know what kind of mother I am, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to articulate. I know that I am not a Helicopter Mom or an Attachment Mom or a Tiger Mom. I’m not really sure I understand what those things are, but I know they aren’t me. I know this because I don’t approach mothering my girls with one particular philosophy. It might be easier if I did, if I had some pre-set dictates on how to raise these beings, but that’s not who I am. I am more of an instinct-based, go with the flow unless that’s no longer appropriate mom. I am more of a have fun with them, let them have what they want unless that is inappropriate. Is this confusing, messy to you? Told you so.

I am the kind of mom that…

…says ‘I love you’ about 987 times a day.

…lets her girls have candy, milkshakes, and cookies before 9am.

…checks her phone way to often.

…screws up appointments.

…prefers kitchen dance parties to almost anything else.

…lets her kids say not-so-great words like butt, fart and poop.

…grows unsettled if she goes too long without seeing her babes.

…encourages the art of silliness.

…gets down on the floor to play.

…tells ridiculous and often inappropriate stories.

…tends to begin sentences with, When Mommy was a girl…

…becomes sad when her girls are sad.

…is happier when her girls are happy.

…cares tremendously about kindness.

…cares tremendously about learning.

…beats herself up from time to time. (Okay, a lot.)

…feels really good about her mothering much of the time.

…wants her girls to stay little and also to get big.

…wants her girls to need her and wants them to become independent.

…buys too many shoes for her girls.

…is bad at brushing hair.

…is too lax on the nutrition front.

…celebrates the small moments as much as the big ones.

…is thrilled to be experiencing childhood again through their eyes.

…who is far less than perfect, but who is okay with that.

…who believes in well-timed bribery.

…who writes words like these in a continued and clumsy effort to capture bits of time.

…is full of a profound and ever-complex love for her little creatures.

What kind of mother/parent are you? Happy Mother’s Day!