posted by Paige on Uncategorized

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Eyes roaming in the half-darkness of the still room, I search for patterns in the ceiling spackle. My left arm aches under the weight of my 20-month-old, and I watch his cheeks move as he nurses in his sleep. Shifting slightly, I hold tight to my two-month-old, nursing on the other side, making sure she doesn’t slip down.

The thick heat of the afternoon presses in, overloading the air conditioner’s perseverant hum. I graze the sweat-soaked hair above my son’s ear with tender fingertips and stroke the other hand over my infant daughter’s leg.

We’d been out at the park all morning, my daughter strapped to my chest in her baby carrier, my son chasing baseballs and swinging his plastic bat through the densely humid air. Despite the tingling fatigue in my muscles, my mind is spry, eager to find some activity elsewhere.

Thinking about all I could be accomplishing while they sleep, I make mental preparations to physically extricate myself for the remainder of their nap. Gently, I attempt to ease my body away from my son’s pursed lips, but he immediately twitches, squealing and nuzzling for the breast again. Startled, my daughter kicks my abdomen and presses into the other breast with renewed interest.

Sighing, I settle into the mattress, closing my eyes. At once my mind is off again, galloping like a wild horse, trying to escape the room, the situation, the entire day. It takes up every thought that comes to it, turning each one over for examination. One particular thought it finds thoroughly fascinating, and it plays there for a long time, following an extended trail of hypothetical questions.

I’m entirely wrapped up in this inner wandering, unaware of how much time may have passed, when my son stirs again, whimpering and threatening to wake. Immediately my attention is there in my body, in whatever he needs. He’s dropped the breast from his mouth and he shifts, seeking it frantically, eyes still shut. I readjust, shifting so that he can nurse again, anxious for him to remain sleeping.

The restless beast of my mind kicks an impatient hoof, eager to be off again, but something keeps me fastened to this moment. The presence of my two sleeping babies fixes me here, to their sloped cheeks and their feathering eyelashes and their tiny bare toes and the soft up-and-down of their somnolent breathing.

Suddenly I’m keenly aware, as I often am these days, that moments like these won’t happen often. There will only be so many afternoons of the three of us piled together as one body. And though I know it’s perfectly okay—necessary even—not to pressure myself to be in love with every moment of mothering, something about this moment feels too rare and precious to be missed.

Just this moment where I’m utterly pinned to the fullness of my life. Just this moment where I’m pressed to these two bodies, to these two lives, which—at least for now—are wholly entwined with mine.