Memories

Today after pre-school drop off, I decided to hit the drive-thru Starbucks, so I picked up a coffee and headed home, following a route I haven't taken in a while, a route that ambles right by Marine Park. When the kids were little--when Vivian was 2 months old and Isaac was a maniacal 18 month old--I used to drive that route every morning. First to Starbucks for my coffee. Then to the park where Vivian would (hopefully) sleep in the carseat while Isaac ran off some of his never-ending steam on the play structure.

I'm not sure why it hit me so hard today--I have driven past that park before, and recently--but as I drove by, chai latte in hand, I felt a physical longing for the little ones. For diapers and squawking infant cries, for unsteady toddles to the slide, for high-pitched voices that can't pronounce the letter S and tantrums over footwear. Maybe it was the weather: August, when the morning sun glints off the tall (by California standards, anyway) trees in the park, when the road by the park is empty, all its regular denizens off grasping one last vacation before summer is over and school starts again. August is when I used to come here with the kids. August is when I had finally just about got a grip on the two kid thing, figured out that I needed to leave the house before nine if I wanted to avoid a full-on Isaac melt down, figured out where the drive-thru coffee store was, and the closest park to it.

You know, those were not particularly wonderful times, I'm realizing now, no matter how bucolic the memory seemed this morning. Isaac the toddler was extremely difficult to keep entertained and always half a second away from terrible injury by running into the street, or sticking his face in the stove, or plunging a fork in his eye or something. I should have wrapped him in yellow caution tape from age 1 to age 2-1/2. Vivian was not a difficult baby, but she wasn't a great sleeper, and that is never fun. I was exhausted, bitter about my c-section, feeling inept as a mother to two children, sure that I was neglecting Vivian too much, convinced I would never be able to control Isaac. We would last at that park about 30 minutes, sometimes a little more, before Vivian would start crying, or Isaac would fall and get hurt or get bored and demand something new. And I would sigh and look at my watch and wonder how in the hell I was going to fill the next 3 hours before naptime. Hmm. Yeah. In truth, it sucked. Hard.

Still, this morning, as I drove by, it hit me like a punch: I want that back. I want to hug those little babies and smell their baby scent. I want to do that again. I want to feel that needed again. I am good at it, no matter what I thought at the time.

Thank you, nostalgia. Thank you, stupid Lady Hormones.

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I have a whole 'nother part to this post. A litany of all the babies that surround me, as a mother to pre-schoolers. But it is taking an eternity to write. And I'm not sure it's even interesting. So I just give you this, and maybe the rest will come later.