for C, little she-who-is

When did I become a mother of two?
Was it six weeks ago, when your baby sister catapulted into the world and spread slender arms into empty air, groping for something to hold onto?

Was it later that day, when my eyes fell on the two of you together for the first time, when you looked up at us and said, “I love her”?

Was it nine months before that, when a tiny creature took on physical substance and lodged herself in a place you had occupied years before?

No. You will learn, as I have, that the key moments of our lives do not necessarily take place on the milestone days. We mark the truly life-changing events not on the calendar, but in our hearts. Often the other people in the room do not even know what has occurred.

Very truly I tell you, I became a mother of two on a Sunday in early February, 2006. It was late in the morning when it happened.

Earlier that day, when I told you that yes, you could wear your cow costume, I was not a mother of two.

Later, when I inserted the thermometer into your ear, and when I heard it beep, and when I clucked, concerned at the triple-digit reading, and poured out a thick orange liquid, eyeing the fill line carefully before giving it to you to drink, I was not yet a mother of two.

When your sister woke up, and you dragged a small stool over to her changing table to watch me dress her, fumble with the snaps, wipe a warm cloth over her face, even then I was not a mother of two.

When I was nursing her, and you came to me with a cowbell on a long red satin ribbon, and asked me to tie it around your neck, completing your costume, and I was ready to say no because my hands were full and because you could wait, because nursing this baby was much more important—I was still not a mother of two.

But when I reconsidered, and repositioned the baby in my lap, and grabbed both ends of the slippery ribbon and guided them over your head, and tied a tidy square knot—
When I realized that, for a three-year-old, bells and costumes and play are the utmost things,
as important, as vital, as mother’s milk—
When I tended to the needs of both of my daughters at once,
easily, effortlessly,
I became a mother of two.

Something shifted, as you clanged away, and as your sister sucked, and as your father stirred the soup on the other side of the room.



You became a sister that day as well.

It did not happen on the day she was born,
when you wore the “It’s a Girl!” ribbon
and admonished everyone who held her to “Put down my sister!”

It did not happen on the day you patiently sang to her when she wailed.

It did not happen that day at preschool
when the mothers and teachers cooed over her
and smiled down at you and said, “I bet you’re a good sister!”

No, it was an ordinary day when it happened.

When I, your mother, her mother, a mother of two,
held her and rocked her to sleep, shuffled from foot to foot,
and she startled awake again and again,
and I, the mother, exasperated, murmured to myself,
“It’s that cow bell”—
When you looked at the wiggling infant in my arms,
then looked down at the satin ribbon, and grabbed it,
and slipped it over your head, and placed it on the table,
as if it were precious, and skipped silently away—

That’s when it happened. Something shifted.

And nobody saw it but me.