So I stopped waiting for her.
I want to tell you I was heartbroken, and I was, but there wasn’t time for it. You cannot fall apart with two six-week-old babies who need to eat every two hours. Grief is a luxury for people who get to sleep. So I folded it up small and put it somewhere I’d deal with later — which, it turns out, was seventeen years later, at a front door.
Mason and Micah became everything to me.
Raising twin babies alone was the hardest thing I have ever done, and I’ve poured concrete in July. Midnight feedings where both of them woke at once and I had no second set of arms. Ear infections and fevers and one terrifying night in the ER with Micah that took a year off my life. I learned to warm a bottle with one hand while rocking a screaming baby in the crook of the other elbow. I learned to function on two hours of sleep and a thermos of gas-station coffee.
