Tuesday night

This blog is like a silent companion that I talk to in my head. I've always had this internal monologue running but now it's filtered through the lens of how I would write about what's happening. Like the way the photography class I took Freshman year in college made me notice the world around me with entirely new eyes.

I want to write but I am a sleep scavenger. I will grab minutes of sleep where I can get them, particularly in the mornings when I'm curled around one of my little girls on the couch as one after the other they wake up, drink a bottle and fall back to sleep in my arms.. It is those early morning hours when I could find the most time to sit and write. But sleeps pulls me down every time. Sleep and one-on-one baby cuddles.

Thoughts today, in the order that they find their way back into my cloudy memory, not the order in which they occurred:

-The look on my son's face when he sees me is just. . . radiant. I can't believe how lucky I feel to be looked at that way.

-I feel very vulnerable these days. It's hard not to throw up my walls and go all Ice Queen and shrug certain things off. I'm glad I'm learning to recognize when I feel this way and to ease myself through it.

-I have such spectacular women friends. I had four different exchanges today; one a vent session on the phone with someone I've been friend with since I was a kid. The other a Facebook messenger exchange with someone I've met in person only twice or three times but who has the ability to make me feel known and accepted in less than ten sentences. One a phone call with a friend who is falling in love. The tenderness in her voice was a promise of wonderful things to come. And finally a work call with a younger colleague who gave me just what I needed emotionally in a totally unexpected way.

-I almost never tell people "It will be ok" Mostly because I hated it when people said that to me after my liver transplant. I was in the throes of grieving my old life and adjusting to this huge new thing (whoa, dramatic but hey it was a dramatic time). I wanted to yell at people, "Oh REALLY? It will be ok?? How do you KNOW? Who are YOU to promise that?" and then punch them in the nose. In my mind. I would never punch someone in their real nose. Similar reactions occurred in response to being told "Everything happens for a reason." (Gah! No it doesn't!)

So I almost never tell people it will be ok but I quite often tell myself that. Huh.

-Holding my daughter on my lap and dancing her to The Little Drummer Boy and watching the funny faces she made, the way she moved her head, the way she moved her body, was like drinking a life-giving tonic. Man, that kid.

I don't know what the future holds. Having four babies is overwhelming and just. . .so much life to contend with. But I know myself so much better than I ever have. And I have such a good net of people who love me and take care of me and cheer me on. And I have the incredible good-fortune to get to see these four little people every day. To know them, to watch them grow, to squeeze them and make them laugh. To pull me out of the tiring inner monologue, out of my head and into my body, onto my butt onto the floor with hands on my face and feet in my lap and drool all over everything. I'll take it.