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I see his proud smile in the mirror and my heart melts. The boy that made me a mommy has been a wise old soul since the day he was born. He came out perfectly content, calmly looking around, wide-eyed and ready to take the whole world in.
They then begin to chat amongst themselves as I make the drive home. It still blows my mind that I created all these tiny humans, each one so unique but each one having a part of Marco and me in looks and personalities.
When we arrive home, the kids immediately unbuckle and jump out. Marco built this beautiful cubby system with hooks for backpacks and shoes right by the garage door with their names painted by a photo of them.
It feels like every day I shoutbackpacks in your cubby!when they just drop their things like hot potatoes on the floor, right by the thing we built so they didn’t do that. One of my favorite parts of motherhood is repeating myself one million times about the same thing, said no mother ever.
I walk into the kitchen and look around at my beautiful home. Through my emotional eyes today, it seems different.
We bought this house ten years ago on only a new officer’s salary. I was working too, and that helped us save for the down payment and renovations, but we had already decided that I would stay home with our future babies and didn’t want to be house-poor. It was a complete fixer-upper that hadn’t been updated in fifty years. The previous owners had bought it new and raised their family here and their kids sold it to us after they passed away.
It’s a two-story, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom house with a two-car garage. Our bedroom is on the first floor right off the living room and the other two bedrooms are upstairs with a small loft we’ve made into a playroom between them. The backyard is lush with old trees that hold four saucer swings, one for each kid because any parent knows that one would never do, and a covered sandbox in the center.
I shake my head and smile. When we got the keys, it had green shag carpet and popcorn ceilings in every room, both super annoying to remove, and the bathrooms and kitchen were both pastel colors.
Marco had so much fun with demolition though. I’d sit back and laugh while he Hulked the cabinets off and smashed the wall that once divided the kitchen and living room with a sledgehammer.
It took months and so many lost hours of sleep, but he renovated our entire home, granting all my wishes.
This home has seen it all, from our days as newlyweds to the first steps of eight little feet, and now it holds the silence while they’re at school.
I smile as the kids come running in from washing up and hop onto the kitchen island barstools for a snack. I’m so grateful our school district doesn’t assign homework. The cliché saying about the days being long and the years being short really is true.
After snack, I go into the garage to switch the wet laundry to the dryer and I see the washer flashing the error code ‘CF.’Shit. It’s a code I know well: “Completely Fucked.” Not really, but it means I’m going to spend the next fifteen minutes fishing out a sock from the drain with a wire coat hanger and the ten after that cleaning up the flood on the floor.
Ugh.Just how I wanted to spend my afternoon.
The next five hours drag and fly by simultaneously. It’s the same as it is every day: play, chores, dinner, shower time, and bedtime, although tonight I’m doing it alone. I learned years ago as a cop’s wife that solo parenting was part of the gig occasionally, and that I can be pissed about it and let that resentment bleed into my marriage, or I can survive and move on. I chose the latter.
After an afternoon of minimal chaos and only onewrestle-turned-to-real-fightto diffuse, bedtime tuck-ins and giving severalone more kisskisses went smoothly and the kids are finally asleep. Just as the noise shocks my senses, the abrupt silence leaves me unnerved, too.
I pull up my yoga app on my smart TV on my dresser and lay my yoga mat in front of it. For so long, my body belonged to my kids. Growing and nurturing them, then years of being everything to them, she and I got disconnected along the way. Yoga has been bringing us together as one.
I sit in the lotus pose and press play and a pre-recorded video begins.
I feel my shoulders loosen as the soothing music plays and the calming voice instructs me to begin my warmup. I breathe in and out, in and out, channeling Zen to my body.
I’m trying to rid my mind of all intrusive thoughts and be in this moment, but they keep popping up.
When was the last time I changed the water filter in the fridge? Did I put the money in the kids’ backpacks for the book fair? Do the kids need new toothbrushes?
“Stop,” I yell at myself in my head.
I focus my attention back on my body and breathe. In, out, in, out.
The instructor has me switch to downward dog and I can feel the burn in my body. It’s a good burn, a burn that reminds me I’m alive and able, so I connect to the feeling and keep my breath steady.
Over the next twenty minutes, I do my best to push the chores and the responsibilities out of my mind. I don’t always succeed, but I’m a work in progress.
I look at the baskets of clean clothes in the corner of my room and scoff. After the washer did me dirty, I’m done with laundry for today, so I stand up to go take a bath instead.
Our master bathroom is one of my favorite rooms. Simple white and gray granite countertops and a double sink, separate shower and tub side-by-side, with gray tiles in the shower and on the floors.
I start the bath, tie my hair up in thealways perfect before bedbun, and undress. After placing my clothes in the hamper, I turn and catch a glimpse of my glistening naked body in the mirror.
My jaw tightens when I think about all the times I’ve heard a woman encouraged to "get her body back after baby.”
It didn’t go anywhere, just changed. You couldn’t ask a butterfly to crawl back into its chrysalis and become a caterpillar again. It’s impossible, and expecting a mom to be the woman she was before she had kids is impossible too. Like that caterpillar transforms into something more beautiful, so does a woman when she becomes a mom.
