Hands Free

Next week, after the J-dog completes his neverending Montessori orientation period, both my children will be in school together all morning.  In other words: the moment I've been anticipating for the past six years of my life has arrived.  This post isn't about me not knowing what to do with my time now that I finally have some to myself, or about how much I want a third child now that two are flitting about the periphery of my nest.

I am happy.

But it's increasingly difficult to remember now how their baby bodies felt: the V-meister spare and birdlike; the J-dog pillowsoft and round with a steady, humming core. I lay in bed this morning post dream, chasing the essence of their infantness as quickly as it receded in smoky wisps from my morningscape. There was an ache, as there always is, and then a quick surrender to the reality that I am best as mother of two.

I'm still occasionally startled by this fleeting, vicelike grip on my gut, a selfish longing for their baby selves. It's not another child that I want - just the J-dog and V-meister for a moment fresh and new, unsullied by the desperate, anxious imprint of a new mother and her constant longing to have two hands free.

I want, of course, to correct my naive babymothering mistakes. But also, just once again, to lift their soft, malleable, diaper-clad bodies into the air, little toes and feet ensconced in the pods of footed pajamas, to walk with them feeling warmth nuzzled in the crook of my neck, and to hold them there with full knowledge of the moment's brevity in time.