eight years ago

I looked over at Archie. He didn't have that softened look around the eyes most people have when they look at a baby. He looked panicked and kind of terrified and I could only see a bundle wrapped in a blanket that seemed to be a dishtowel with blue stripes on the ends. A nurse put another bundle on my chest and I looked into a tiny red face who was screaming at me -- "Waahh!" Pause. "Waahh!" Pause. "Waahh!"

"What do you think, Mom?"

I looked up at the nurse, at said, "That's a baby."

She laughed. "Of course it's a baby! What did you think it was?"

"I don't know. But that's a baby."

"Yes, that's a baby. And you have another one just like her over there."

And then I felt incredibly nauseated because, holy shit, I now had two babies.



*****



Now those two babies are eight. I can barely reconcile that these big girls who gallump around the house and read and giggle and tear around on their mountain bikes were once those babies who terrified me right after they were born.

Happy birthday, Elizabeth Annika and Louisa May.