Wednesday, April 10, 2019

babies

Mary turned four on Tuesday.

She’s funny. She likes to send me pictures of cats and tells me that she loves me and asks me to be her friend. I love that. I love her.

 I love all the kids. I love watching them grow. I love watching them become their own person.

I always thought I would have a lot of kids. For a long time I wanted 5. I had names picked out and furniture and dreams. I had dreams.

I babysat and nannied and cared for so many children for a long time. I thought I knew so much about so much. There was a time when I had changed more diapers than all of my sisters put together. And I was so proud of this. I was so arrogant.

So much time has passed and that arrogance has fallen to wisdom and now I understand how ignorant and naïve I really am. I understand now how little credit the act of changing diapers actually grants you in comparison to loving and raising a human. I understand, that in truth, I don’t even remotely understand what it means to be a parent, to love your child, to be solely responsible for another human.

There are 12 children: Haydn, Louise, Jonah, Ava, June, Sophia, Caroline, Corinne, Sadie, Olivia, Rosalie, and Mary.

Mary is the youngest. The youngest is now four.

For years and years we had baby after baby after baby. And now, the baby isn’t a baby.

That time in our family has passed.

I always thought I would have a lot of kids. I had dreams.

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