If I had another child, I'd name it Scotch Tape...or maybe Scotchy

May 18th

Eight years ago today I became a mother for the first time - twice - when Roan and Posey came into the world. I know every mother has prego stories, and I'm no exception. However, I'm completely bored with the thought of discussing morning sickness and swollen ankles and buying undies of an alarmlingly large size (but golly PETE, have you seen those undies???) Rather, this is a reflection on the journey Roan and Posey and I made together to reach that first May 18th.

I think every mother worth her salt loves to celebrate the birthdays of her children. For me, I have twice the joy and twice the gratitude...and not just because I have twice the children. Roan and Posey came early - way too early, and it's no exaggeration when I say that they are little miracles. Although I don't always show it...like when Posey asks me why I never comb my hair (usually on my way to work), or when Roan makes the armpit fart sound for the 216th time at the dinner table....today I am simply wallowing in it.

I am the second sister in my family to become pregnant with twins. For all those pesky people who want to know, no, we didn't use fertility. We are just fertile. My brother-in-law once - and only once, due to the wrath he suffered - proudly referred to us as Double Yolkers. Sister Darci had twin girls ten years before me. And, as is typical of Darc, she sailed right through the pregnancy with her belly blazing a way through Wal-Mart aisles across Iowa. At 39 weeks she was induced and my ultra cool nieces were born. They were big and healthy and beautiful. I was quite confident that I would have the same experience. I had apparently forgotten that Darci and I have many similarities - but vast differences. For example, while Darci was helping my Dad chop firewood, I was inside highlighting interesting passages in the Encyclopedia Britannica. While she was racing a minibike around our backyard, I was wearing a skirt on my head and impersonating Crystal Gayle in the living room, complete with candlestick microphone. When someone needed a babysitter, or a housesitter, or someone to cleverly design their new kitchen cabinets, they called Darci. The only reason anyone called me was to see if Darci was home. Regardless, I felt certain that even my affiliation with Wonder Darci would work in my favor.

So imagine my surprise when, at 20 weeks, I went into labor. Instead of having baby showers and nesting, I was rushed to the hospital that day, and there I stayed. In fact, I was a full-time resident until the very day I reached 29 weeks, which just happened to be May 18th, 2003.

I met other women while in the hospital who relished their bedrest. They knitted sweaters and wrote long letters to their grandmothers. They played online games, designed baby announcements, watched soap operas every morning and napped every afternoon. They were peaceful and relaxed. And I wanted to punch them in their smiling, pregnant cow faces. Didn't they realize that the world was going on outside? And we were missing it? Didn't they know I had a surgery center to run, parties to attend, and a nursery to decorate? And didn't they lay in bed in fear every night, as I did, and worry obsessively that their babies would fly out of their uterus at any moment if they so much as sneezed? Clearly, they did not. I retreated to my room and entered a phase that is best described as The Great Depression.

Under normal circumstances, I'm just not the lay-around-and-relax kind of gal. I'm more of the run-your-ass-off-all-the-time variety. So when my activity was suddenly, completely, unilaterally curtailed, I became a nasty little prego. A caged animal on a double dose of hormones, if you will. For some reason I still cannot explain, the only item that temporarily soothed my inner beast was Scotch tape. Poor Sister Deidra was living nearby at that time, and she became not only my link to the outside world, but my supplier. She would speed to the hospital after putting in a full day at a demanding job, and spend her evenings engaged in such fine activities as helping me pee in a bed pan, inspecting my belly button at my insistence to see if she could see the babies coming out, rubbing my feet, opening and then closing the curtains at my whim, fetching pudding, then a spoon, then a different spoon, damn it, didn't I say spoon not a spork?, then a different flavor of pudding. When she finally escaped my clutches and walked (or ran, God love her) down the hall, I would snatch up my phone and dial her mobile. And I would sob uncontrollably. When she would ask me what I needed, the only thing I could squeak out in reply was, "MORE TAPE!!!!!" She brought it to me in packages, in rolls, in dispensers. Colored tape, double-sided tape, scented tape. Dr. Seuss could write a series of books about my love of tape and its' many uses. To this day, she and I cannot enter a Fred Meyer or a Target together without her instinctively turning to me and asking, "Dor, do you need any tape?"

Almost nine weeks and nine gazillion rolls of Scotch tape later, Roan and Posey made their debut. At the ripe old age of 31, I was convinced that I had seen and done all that mattered, and that kids were like icing on an already very satisfying cake. And then came that moment. The moment when they held up my teeny, tiny Posey and I looked into her enormous blue eyes for the first time...and I was lost and found and everything in between. Just one minute later, I had the same experience while gazing into Roans sleepy brown eyes, already fringed with to-die-for lashes. I was forever changed. In the span of two minutes, in an operating room in Salt Lake City, I became a mother. Had I not been numb from the chest down, I would have leapt off the table and wildly hugged every pregnant cow face in the hospital.

Eight years later, with my kids tucked into their beds and my sisters and I wildly texting each other into the wee hours, my heart smiles. I don't think parenthood is for everyone, and I will be the first one to support your right to remain childless. But I'm grateful for every fingerprinted window, eye roll, dental bill and call from the teacher, because each one reminds me that I am the lucky mother of two vibrant, sassy buck-toothed kids who defied all the odds to be here today.

Happy Birthday, Roan and Posey.

Home Is Where the What Is??

5.12.11

The kids and I have been living in our "new" house for almost three weeks now. I can't quite get past the feeling that I'm just visiting. I catch myself thinking that I will call the former owner and ask her why she chose that color for the laundry room, or if she has a trick for making the shower stop leaking. I picture the two of us sipping hot tea and chatting about how the snag in the carpet happened, and maybe kneeling side by side to scrub at a pesky spot on the kitchen floor. Then I realize that if I hate the paint (which I do), I should change it. And if the shower leaks (and it so does), it's mine to fix. The house - and the yard, the appliances, the front door that blows open every once awhile, despite being locked - they are mine now.

And so is the anxiety of living "alone" again.

It is technically true that I don't live alone, as I'm very lucky to have three constant companions in Roan, Posey and Penelope. But I'm the only GROWN UP in our home, and that means that all dog vomit, paper cuts, unpaid bills, mystery smells, spiders and scary night noises fall firmly into my domain. When you don't have another grown up to turn to and say snidely, "Can you deal with the laundry FOR ONCE?" you tend to feel alone. And you know what? I can deal with alone. It's the transiency I would really like to shed.

It's a fact that my concept of "home" has taken a sound whacking over the past few years. The last home I owned was in Washington, which I left when my crazy (then) husband - side note, he's STILL crazy, just no longer my husband - threatened to kill me and my children. I left suddenly. I left without a plan. Hell, I left without my toothbrush and most of my clothes. I left with the knowledge that if I stayed, something terrible was going to happen. I left without knowing where the four of us would sleep that night. However, thanks to the goodness and courage of my friend Cheryl and her husband Gordy, we found a new home, albeit temporary. The four of us slept in their family room on mattresses lined up side by side on the floor. Believe it or not, we had fun. We played and laughed and watched goofy movies. While they slept peacefully at night, I cried. Time passed. I spent dozens of hours and thousands of dollars in family court, fighting to protect myself and my little family. And when that was taken care of, we moved yet again into a space that I never dreamed I would inhabit after the age of 18. Yes, friends and neighbors. You know it. My parents basement.

There is a reason why we grow up and leave our parents homes, and both my parents and I are painfully aware of those reasons. If Alex Trebec had a category entitled, "Reasons Why Parents Should Avoid Co-habitation With Their Adult Offspring", my mom and dad and I would ace it. 1. Knowing Too Much About Your Parents Bathroom Habits 2. Being Unable to Lie around in Your Underwear on Saturdays 3. Wishing Nobody Could Hear You Whisper Scream at Your Children, etc. That said, we made it work. And despite my sassy mouth, I will never be able to thank my parents sufficiently for taking us in and holding us close.

And now....here we are. In our home. And while my kids sleep peacefully, I clean and I sing and I pray. And I wait for the day that home feels like home again.