cowbird daily story: becoming mommy

Cowbird.com is a now-archived storytelling website designed by Jonathan Harris, a Stanford Knight Fellow. The site was designed to marry words and imagery to document the human experience. I was an early adaptor and prolific user, though I have since deleted most of my work for the purpose of publishing in the future.

Cowbird’s editor, Annie Correal of the New York Times, selected pieces for the Cowbird Daily Story, which was emailed to subscribers. With the exception of the founder, my work was featured more than any other user on the site. Here is one example.

Sunday, 13 May, 2012

A mother earns her name.

Three: Becoming Mommy

I had wanted to be a mom my entire life. More specifically, someone's Mommy. I had lots of ex-boyfriends who did their best to make me feel like their mother, but, you know. It wasn't the same.

Seemingly out of nowhere, I had two beautiful daughters. Being an idealistic person, I wish there was a different story to tell about how they came to be...their story to this point is not exactly the stuff anyone dreams about writing in a baby book. But as the girls grew and as we evolved past those chaotic beginnings, our story became something reverent and divine.

It took an uncomfortably long time for my brain to catch up with everything that had happened. The logistics of having unplanned twins as a single parent, 2 months early, and having one at home on a heart monitor and one in the NICU (20 miles away) for almost 8 weeks...It was a unique experience.

When I attempt to thumb through the filing cabinet of my long term memory for relics from those days, I find the only memories that are not shrouded in blackness are the ones I've recreated from photographs. I remember almost nil from the first four months of motherhood. Everything is black and I wonder if it felt that way as I lived it, or if I was simply incapable of storing anything in the midst of such stress.

Then it happened that suddenly one spring day, I came back into my body, into the present. It was very Whoopi-Goldberg-invading-Patrick-Swayze's-body-in-Ghost. I laid eyes on my 4 month old chubby-cheeked little puddings for what felt like the first real time, and fell in the craziest most intense love of my life.

The way Tessa's teeth came in like a hillbilly jack-a-lantern unstitched me
The way Olivia belly-laughed like a jolly trucker; ridiculous
The intoxicating smell of their breath, like pure holiness
The way they smelled like sweet bread when they napped in my arms? Mmmm, crazy delicious

It was all too much. In the beginning, nothing had changed. It was just plain old me plus a couple of babies. Then suddenly I changed everything, and we became an indivisible unit. I used to think good moms just happened, the result of some mechanism that got tripped once a baby came barreling out of your body. A natural, fluid evolution. Learning later that good moms are pillars of sacrifice, patience, determination, selflessness, ingenuity and power. That being somebody's Mommy is not an automatic badge of honor ascribed to anyone who's passed a kid through their vagina, but a moniker you have to earn. It's baptism by fire (not to mention the other parental elements Pee, Poo, and Puke)

It took four months for me to feel like a mommy. My twins turned four years old this February and in the 44 months that had passed, they have filled my life with everything and more.

The day of their birthday party I had an out of body experience, except this time nothing went black. On the contrary, everything went bright white and glowing, and my daughters were at the center of it in their birthday dresses. No part of me moved but to stop the rolling of a couple teardrops down my cheek. The daughters I'd dreamed of all my life were right here, and they were mine to hold.

And I am their Mommy in all the fullness of the title. They made it so.