IWD

Today is International Women’s Day. On this day five years ago, I was nursing our twin girls who had just turned three months old. We were living in our hip, downtown loft apartment. I had been on maternity leave for over 3 months and was just about to start going back into the studio a few days a week. Of course, the world ended up shutting down instead, but we won’t get into that story this time.

I remember it was a sunny day, which in western Washington is always a good day. I was sitting on our leather couch in the living room, the big floor to ceiling windows were letting in the warm spring sun. I remember looking down and seeing their little faces looking up at me as I fed them amidst a pile of pillows propping all of us up. My eyes darting from one face to the other. It was my first International Women’s Day as a girl mom. I took a photo of each of them that day. One girl with big blue eyes, and one girl with big green eyes.

Even now, five years later as I lay cozied up on our bed, I can see those photos I took of them. I can hear their little cooing sounds. I can smell their baby heads.

Now they are 5 and reading books, playing make-believe and making up dances to their favorite songs. And all of it happened in a blink of one eye. And all of it happened over the span of a million years. There is no timeline, and somehow only timeline when you are raising kids. I will never understand it, and I won’t ever have to understand. That’s the mystery of all of this, and sometimes mysteries are better left to be wondered at.

-HR