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.