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She f’real?

My kids turn five in May.

People, upon finding out that my girls are twins, respond with squeals of delight. “You’re so lucky,” they say to me, and to them, and we all just kind of look at each other like, she f’real?

I was an only child. My mom asked me the other day as she gazed like a sick puppy at them destroying a couple of corn dogs (they could be flinging their own poo at her wall and she’d be delightedly trying to sell it as artwork to the Crary) whether I wished I’d had a sister.

I’m not going to lie. I was lonely a lot in my early childhood. And, looking back on my life, I can say that if I’d had a sister (or a brother, in the interest of equal opportunity speculation), I’d probably be more well-adjusted today. But because I never had anyone bothering me, because I was pretty much left to my own devices as a child, I had no choice but to become creative and to read. Like, a lot.

Babysitter’s Club.

Represent.

This was back in the 80’s and early 90’s on a farm a half mile off the road. I spent a lot of time outside, in the woods, and for some reason that I don’t care to try to understand in greater depth, laying in the empty corn cribs. Reading.

My mom was able to bond with me exclusively, and as a woman who was really looking forward to bonding with babies, I was disappointed in my inability to bond with them in any way that felt meaningful. People always tell me “you’re going to miss this,” and I know I’m going to miss certain parts of it.

Already, photos of those chubby cheeks and not-quite-formed faces pop up on my Timehop and my chest seizes at how adorable they were. How adorable I didn’t get to see they were at the time, in part because I probably needed to be seen for postpartum depression, and in part because I couldn’t stop to really see it between the constant diaper changes, vomit cleanings, and night wakings.

There are days I see babies – pretty much every day that I see a baby – and I want to scoop it up and bounce it and feed it and love it.

But not change it. Or keep it. Or get up at two a.m. and make it stop crying.

The one thing I’ve learned so far is that, as much as I wish I’d done so many things differently already, there is no amount of money you could pay me, today, to go back to raising babies. No amount. Every day older they get is another day closer I come to a time when they won’t want to snuggle up beside me in unicorn footie pajamas and watch My Little Pony. A time when I won’t be the enemy because I’m making them put on their shoes but because I’m making them put on more clothes, or take off more makeup, before they’re allowed to leave the house.

A time when cuddle time every morning and every night, snug and warm in mom’s bed, won’t be even remotely desirable let alone the stuff of the best parental bribes.

But then I think back to a time when they couldn’t put on their own shoes or tell me why they cried. At great length. No matter what I did.

Until I wanted to claw my own eyes out and “go missing” straight to a remote island, where I’d have to hunt and slaughter my own feral goats to live, but that wouldn’t allow my extradition back to the United States.

Sure, they couldn’t run away from me in a store, but their compliance couldn’t be bought with a promise of TimBits on Friday either.

I think what I love most about my almost-five-year-olds are their minds. They’re fierce little minds, capable of coming up with all manner and mode of mischief. But they’re brilliant, enlightening, clarifying minds that come up with the random, spontaneous utterances that make me see the world from a completely new angle. Their candid conversations, ones I overhear them having in the room next door after I’ve put them in separate beds, when they think they’re tricking me by consolidating into one room for clandestine sleepovers?

Those conversations are poetry.

I mean, actual poetry.

Not beat poetry or, like, Vanilla Ice lyrics.

Every bit of independence they gain gives us all the freedom to come together as a family based on actual desire rather than one-sided need. Every day I’m a little less their caretaker and a little more their teacher, role model, confidant, and ally.

In May, my daughters will turn five. And I know I’m supposed to be sad about the five years that are gone, but honestly, I’m just really excited about what the next five years have in store.

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