Mothering & Writing

When my babies were born I knew they were mine in a really primal sense. But when I looked at them - just looked at them - they were little strangers, otherworldly creatures, whose faces were a mystery. They didn’t look like mine. But my god, I knew them by smell. And I knew their cry from the very first moment. It wrenched at my heart and pulled at me in a way no other sound has ever done before or since. And I knew them by touch. Just exactly how my baby felt in my arms, their bodily heft, the shape of the elbows that I once felt from within.