The things we do for our children

/ Meg

The parking lot was hopping—post-holiday shoppers stashing wrapping paper for next year; parents pulling teens into the salon for after-winter-break haircuts; tired workers dashing into the Arby’s drive-thru, brake lights glowing.

I ignored them all, laser-focused on my mission. I’ll be parked near the Food Lion. Black SUV.

Pulse racing, I eventually spotted a vehicle with potential. The driver was clearly inside, lights on, set a bit apart from the rest of the holiday hubbub. She was waiting for someone … with an item I desperately wanted. Waiting, in fact, for me.

Gliding into the spot next to hers, we locked eyes. She sprang from her vehicle with furtive glances around in the fading winter light.

“Megan?”

I nodded.

She ducked her head toward my open passenger window. “Do you have it?” came the whisper. “Do you have the goods?”

In her own hand: a petite purple box.

With cat ears.

Every generation has its crazes. Tickle Me Elmos and Tamagotchi, Barbies and Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Kids to Care Bears …

For us, well—it’s Aphmau MeeMeows.

“Aphmau cats”—created and popularized by YouTube star Aphmau—are all the rage with a certain elementary school set, and my 6-year-old daughter is amongst these dedicated collectors. Hadley’s gateway was a cotton candy-decorated cat for last year’s birthday; I think she’s up to 12. The Cat Clowder goes with her (almost) everywhere, and they all have names. Personalities. Needs. Dreams. Demands. Enemies. … Revenge plots? Who knows. Assume nothing.

Like any crafty merchandiser, MeeMeows are initially sold in mystery blind boxes—you don’t know which you’ll get. They’re also available in a series, or “litter,” so designs vary. The surprise is part of the allure. But, of course, this inevitably leads to the elation of revealing a plush you want … or the crushing disappointment of a duplicate. A dupe.

That might be tolerable to some people, but not my neurodiverse children. So I don’t play around anymore: I figured out I needed to game the system longggggg ago.

When a new MeeMeow is requested (as holiday money burns a hole in Hadley’s pocket, for example), I will graciously offer to pick up said toy on a “Target run.”

Secretly? The goods are in the basement.

Because do I hand that blind box over blindly? No. Ohhhh, no.

I buy one or two at a time. Then, with the precision of a hero snipping the red wire, just the red wire!, I break the box seal with scissors. In the dim overhead light of my minivan, I snip a corner of the inner pouch and peer in. What are we working with here—Emerald? Ruby? Sapphire? The coveted Rainbow plush?!?

These kids have me out here with a pounding heart, desperately hoping I don’t see the freakin’ Diamond cat again. Anything but the Diamond cat.

If the toy in question is needed for the collection, I’m relieved. I carefully reseal it to share as needed/earned. And if it’s a dupe, I stow it away for a future trade/sale to another eager soul via Facebook Marketplace. My daughter is none the wiser.

Plush cat dealing.

How did I get here?

Hadley now has 7 of the 8 MeeMeows in Litter 4. After I famously crashed and burned thinking I could “cheat the system” with a Temu knock-off (don’t do it—trust me, they know), I’ve turned exclusively to online resell sites to source real Aphmau products. Most posts are from parents similarly on the hunt.

One listing popped up last week, and it was local! Cats, sale or trade.

Last night I left work to meet the woman in her black SUV. Like me, my source has a young daughter desperate to complete her set. These kids talk of little else. It’s the elusive Princess Diana Beanie Baby, I’m telling you.

I had Rainbow; she had Galaxy. We’d coordinated a trade.

I slid down my passenger window.

“Do you have it?” she whispered, glancing around mock-suspiciously. “Do you have the goods?”

We laughed. Then cringed. Then laughed again.

“The things we do for our children,” she said.

We exchanged boxes, commiserated a little on the whole Cat Situation. Eventually, she mirrored my tired mom-to-mom salute and turned to go.

“God bless you,” she said sincerely. “Thank you. We almost have them all. But …”

She paused, leaning a little closer.

“… You know series 5 is coming out soon, right?”

write meg!’s 2023 reading honors

/ Meg / 2 Comments

With just a few days left before we flip those calendars again, I wanted to sit down and ruminate on my favorite reads of the last 12 months. A lifelong list-maker, cataloguer, and chronicler of things, I still enjoy tracking my reading … even if I’m not the prolific reviewer of yesteryear!

I probably say this every December, but I’ve really recommitted to reading—and guarding my reading time, too. As a busy mom/human, it’s easy to be distracted and pulled into a thousand other projects I “should” be doing … but when I recognized that time spent in my fictional worlds is self-care as much as anything else, it became easier to protect that time. (It also helps that I have a long-ish commute.)

Interestingly, very few of the books I read this year were actually published in 2023—and all of my favorites were backlist items. Hmm.

My Year in Reading: 2023

  • Books read: 56 / Fiction: 40 • Non-Fiction: 16
  • Format – Audio: 40 / Print: 16
  • Countries visited: 9 (USA, England, France, Australia, Canada, Greece, Trinidad & Tobago, Italy, Sweden) / Bonus “Travel” to the Cosmos

See my full list on Goodreads

 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot (2011)

I started this book a decade ago, and my younger (and more easily distracted) self didn’t find it engaging. Fast forward to 2023 and there I was, weeping at my kitchen table, ignoring the world around me while I frantically googled to discover what has happened to the Lacks family in the years since Skloot’s work was first published. I now work in communications for a major healthcare system, and the medical aspect intrigued me — and my colleagues, who made The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks the first pick for our hospital’s book club.

It’s fascinating that, in the 12 years since it was first published, HeLa cells have also been used in the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, among many other medical breakthroughs — and I wonder how differently our collective story might have played out without their availability. Like millions (er, billions?) of others, I have personally benefited and been protected by medications developed as a result of HeLa research.

Henrietta has helped me and my children, too. Her story lives on.

Goodreads • Thrift Books

The Rose Code
Kate Quinn (2021)

Historical fiction at its finest! Opening in 1940, Quinn’s novel follows the life of Britain’s code breakers and the secret world of Bletchley Park in its race to defeat Germany in World War II.

It’s impossible to distill this down into an easy-to-digest recommendation — it was so layered, dimensional, heart-wrenching, and just all-around captivating. I loved it so much that I reorganized a recent trip to London in the hope of seeing Bletchley with my husband and, though the mansion’s renovations had us changing plans again, I can’t wait to visit someday! I’ve also given out several copies to fellow book lovers and basically made a nuisance of myself singing its praises. Truly a remarkable book.

Goodreads • Thrift Books

Black Cake
Charmaine Wilkerson (2022)

Ohhhh, I’m a sucker for a good multi-generational family saga — and this one delivered (and then some). Opening with Byron and Benny, children of the recently-deceased and larger-than-life Eleanor Bennett, the novel unfolds with a series of mysteries that eventually blend into a compelling symphony and rumination on inheritances and identity. It’s beautifully written, evocative, and kept me guessing throughout. The audio narration is especially powerful!

Goodreads • Thrift Books

The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah (2015)

I’m late to the Kristin Hannah game, but I got there! It’s not hard to see why readers tear through her books and spend countless hours discussing them afterward. They’re gut-punchers, thought-provokers, and all-around suck-you-in classics that don’t let you up for air. The Nightingale fell into this category — set in France during World War II, it’s the sort of book that means nothing else is getting done until you’ve finished it. It’s best to just allow yourself to be swept up and away … and hang on.

Goodreads • Thrift Books

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
Dave Grohl (2021)

This one was probably the biggest surprise of my reading year! As a dedicated library user, The Storyteller is one of those books I fell into serendipitously while scrolling through “available to borrow now!” lists in my Libby app … and then I just absolutely freakin’ loved it. I’ve long maintained that I can enjoy a well-written memoir by just about anyone and, despite knowing little about Dave Grohl, I dove in.

To my surprise, Dave is a fellow D.C. local who immediately sucked me in with his warm, engaging style and Washington-area references to his idyllic suburban childhood. His love and appreciation for his mom, combined with the way she supported him as he pursued his passions, was just really heartwarming.

It’s about music, certainly, but it’s really about life — parenting, family, resilience. It’s funny, heartbreaking, and completely absorbing. Those with rock knowledge will probably understand all the musical references way more than I did, but my lack of coolness in that regard didn’t hamper my enjoyment in the least.

Also, Dave seems like a truly A+ human. I want only good things for him. Rock on, sir.

Goodreads • Thrift Books

Circe
Madeline Miller (2018)

When’s the last time I lost himself in a fantasy novel? Well … November, as it happens, when I fell back into the genre with Circe. The audio experience was otherworldly. I mindlessly folded a lot of clothes while listening to Madeline Miller’s compelling take on this daughter of Helios, so absorbed was I in needing to know her fate. The Song of Achilles, Miller’s debut work, is definitely high up in my TBR for 2024!

Goodreads • Thrift Books

Glimmers

/ Meg / 4 Comments

A glimmer is the opposite of a trigger. It’s a moment of the delightfully unexpected — a tiny slice of happiness, even joy.

In the year since the my mother-in-law’s death, grief has pulled at me in a thousand ways. It’s yanked at the fabric of my family. I realize that, at 38, I’m very fortunate to have only just experienced profound loss — but that pain is still acute, and made even sharper by walking the path beside my husband and children.

The past year was full of “firsts” — the ones you don’t want, and you can’t believe you’re living through. It was a lot of going through the motions. Fall’s arrival without Alex calling to tell me about the “indicator tree” outside their home, the first to change colors, knowing I appreciate the hues as much as she did. The first Christmas unwrapping the Grinch ornaments she handed down — the advent calendars, the quilts, the handwritten tags I’d somehow saved. The first set of birthdays. The first spring. First summer. Vacations. Milestones.

And now, we’re here — the second fall. Soon Hadley will outgrow the last dress Alex chose, on a mad shopping spree that last vacation. “Save this for back-to-school,” she’d said quietly, with an unspoken just in case. We hadn’t known then, had no diagnosis, but the pain was there. Always there. And maybe she had known, without wanting to.

I think of her daily, and find her everywhere. I’m not spiritual, but I can’t help but notice the praying mantis that settled on my shoulder … the yellow butterfly that followed me for blocks. I wave to the lingering cardinal. Whisper “hello” in the fading light.

Glimmers are there — pinpricks in the inky dark of grief. It just takes time, we all say, because it’s true. And with time, they have snuck up on me.

The first cool breath of fall. I’d had to park farther away, walk longer to my office. Leaves crunched underfoot — sounds of childhood, of warmth — and I’d taken my time, ignoring the neon call of the time clock. Suddenly a full parking lot was less frustrating.

An unexpected afternoon off with my sister. Catching up over pumpkin coffees, nowhere we needed to be (until, you know, 4:30).

Taking the doors off my husband’s Jeep. Changing out of pajamas, back into jeans, cruising for ice cream at sunset on a weeknight. Turning up the heat in our open breezy vehicle — cold + warmth, side by side.

Spencer and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary this fall. We’re taking a big trip — the honeymoon I was too anxious to plan at the time, then too pregnant to ponder. We’re going to Paris, then London, and I think often about how excited Alex would be … discussing all the details, the plans, the “what-ifs.” Counting down. Sending us care packages. Splitting the time caring for our children with my parents.

Alex was an arranger, like me — and a traveler who had more to see.

When I squint, really look, that’s another glimmer: we have our memories. We could never forget her. And wherever she is, whatever she is, we carry her with us, too.

Creating ‘Black Cake’

/ Meg

Has a book ever made you long for home — only not your home, perhaps, but another’s. A stronger sense of identity? A feeling of culture, of connection, of deep community roots?

Black Cake did this for me — sucked me in like the unheeded hurricanes off the Island, ripping me down in its current. Rich, lyrical, beautiful, heartbreaking … Charmaine Wilkerson spins a multi-generational, multi-cultural saga like none I’ve read before.

What can I say? This novel has everything. Emotional resonance, complicated but relatable sibling and family relationships, deep love, heartbreaking separations, atmosphere and a sense of foreboding mingled with hope … I couldn’t get enough.

At the heart of the story is the titular dessert — a Caribbean black cake studded with soaked fruits, based on the author’s late mother’s recipe. But it’s not just about the food. As Wilkerson herself states, it centers around identity — innate and chosen. It was amazing to experience the transformations of each individual throughout the story.

And the water — it’s a character, too. Churning. Beckoning. At once welcoming and dangerous. Again and again, the Bennetts return to the ocean, and I found these slices of story deeply affecting. Perhaps because I’ve never learned to swim.

It’s been weeks now, and I’m afraid Black Cake has ruined me for other books. The audio was incredibly engrossing and well-done, with narrators Lynnette R. Freeman and Simone Mcintyre skillfully bringing the characters — their plights, joys, pains — to life.

Don’t miss it. Don’t sleep on it. Just run to this shoreline, friends, and dive in.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Loving like your life depends on it

/ Meg

When’s the first time you fell in love?

For me, it was May 1997 — with Taylor Hanson. ‘Til then, you know, I’d suffered through the usual schoolgirl crushes on classmates … and Peter Brady. But it was Taylor, with his long golden locks and uniquely charismatic voice, that really tugged at my 11-year-old heartstrings.

I’ve had many obsessions — sorry: hobbies — since. But Hanson remains a constant. My sister and I have seen them in concert dozens of times, most recently as last summer. Twenty-five years after I first stuck “Middle of Nowhere” into my Walkman, the opening chords of “MMMBop” still light me up inside. (I randomly heard the song while shopping last weekend and, with a 3-pound roast in my hands, still did a shoulder shimmy. As my husband likes to say: we’ve reached the age of this grocery story is playing my jams.)

Why do I bring up Taylor? Well, because for as long as I’ve had hobbies, I’ve been teased — sometimes gently, occasionally less so — for them. Hanson gave way to ‘NSYNC, and ‘NSYNC became John Mayer. But for the many years before I had a (real) first kiss and occupied myself with personal romantic drama, I lost myself entirely in the world of adoration. And fan fiction.

I’d nearly forgotten about it … pushed into the recesses of my juvenilia, if you will.

Thank goodness Tabitha Carvan woke me up.

I stumbled upon This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something — Anything — Like Your Life Depends On It at the recommendation of Katherine Center, one of my favorite authors. (Where Katherine leads, I follow.)

And follow I did — straight down the rabbit hole that was Australian writer Tabitha Carvan summing up the totality of my life in one book. Like me, Tabitha is a tired 30-something (or 40-something?) writer and mother of two young kids working to balance her career with parenting and marriage.

In the haze of her day-to-day life, she randomly gets sucked into “Sherlock” and its charming star, Benedict Cumberbatch. No one is more surprised than Tabitha when she’s suddenly googling Benedict at every opportunity, talking her husband into watching the popular TV series for the umpteenth time, and devouring online forums and “Sherlock” slash fiction.

I know it’s right there in the title, but it’s true: this isn’t strictly about Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s about carving out space for yourself in your own life. It’s also about embracing your passions — your uniquely you things — and reframing how you think about them. Why is it, Tabitha posits, that a middle-aged man can cheer loudly for hours at a football game without earning a second glance, but a woman doing the same at a Backstreet Boys reunion concert is immature or weird?

So unsurprisingly, this is also a book about feminism. I listened to the audio (very good, highly recommend) and was unable to underline my favorite passages, but one that really stood out was about Tabitha making a Benedict Cumberbatch photo the wallpaper on her phone. It felt wrong to her — but why? Because she was a mother. Mothers are supposed to have photos of their children as their wallpaper. Our children are supposed to be everywhere, with little space left for anything non-children. If not — can we really consider ourselves “good mothers”?

Tabitha talks about how Benedict infused joy in her life again. She interviews others who love the actor and dives headlong into the fandom, eagerly gobbling up anything to fuel her interest.

Over the summer, as my mother-in-law was dying and I was stressed at home with two active kids and needed an escape, I joined the rest of the world in obsessing over a truly under-appreciated, little-known talent: one Harry Styles. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? Listening to “Harry’s House” was the gateway drug. I got sucked into the Harry vortex as swiftly as I fell in love with Taylor Hanson all those years ago.

I spent the following months feeling … happy. And silly. I mean, I’m a happily married 37-year-old woman. Why was I looking up decade-old One Direction videos and researching the meaning behind Harry’s 50+ tattoos? Well … I mean, it was fun. I needed a distraction — something far from my “normal” life — and I found it with handsome, energetic Harry.

With the help of Tabitha, my new guru, I’ve totally reframed my thinking on “The Summer of Harry.” I’ve never been embarrassed by my interests, exactly; as I type, my work desk features a headshot of Harry below an engagement photo with my husband. I once owned enough Hanson T-shirts to not repeat a look for two weeks straight. In the early 2000s, I wrote an epic ‘NSYNC-inspired fan fic called “Love You Latte” that, if memory serves, involved Justin and the main character — Megan, obvs — meeting in a coffeeshop. Starbucks was the height of sophistication, thank you.

As I’ve aged, becoming more Mom than Megan, I do think about what is “age appropriate.”

But appropriate for whom? And to what end?

Life is short. Soak it up. Obsess over it. Like what you like and offer no apologies.

Read Tabitha’s book and join us.

If you need me, I’ll be here with “Sledgehammer.”

Losing my appetite

/ Meg / 4 Comments

I got sick last week. Not sniffles sick, or sore throat sick … I’m talking an off-to-bed-with-you hurricane of nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, and exhaustion that struck out of nowhere. I could do little more than cling to my bed for dear life, watching the light change outside, just waiting and waiting and waiting for it to be over.

To complicate matters, my husband quickly became sick, too, though thankfully to a less traumatizing degree. Parenting doesn’t come with sick days, as they say, so our mornings started with Spencer and I playing “Who Feels Worst?” The “winner” had to take the kids to school—a 6-minute drive that might as well have been a transcontinental voyage.

Worse still, this lasted for four solid days. I’m used to the terrible 24-hour stomach bugs that, while awful, quickly release their grip. This? Days in the fetal position, delirious with pain and nausea. Save childbirth, I can’t remember another time in my adult life that I was so incapacitated.

I missed days of work, guzzling up the last dregs of my paid time off, but did manage to crush two seasons of “Emily in Paris.” I knew I was eventually feeling better when Gabriel’s lavish French fare went from stomach-churning to lip-licking. There was no particular moment—I just suddenly felt hungry, and like a veil had been pulled back from my pallid face. I stood up. I took a shower. I ate some soup. And just like that, I returned to the land of the living.

And what’s the first thing everyone asked as I emerged from my puke-hell?

Ooh, that’s awful.

But how much weight did you lose?

/////////////

Family, friends, coworkers. Many people. Were they just making conversation? Empathizing? Sure, of course. Self-criticism and the desire for weight loss does seem to be the great equalizer, doesn’t it?

This isn’t a slight against anyone, trust me. In the depths of my misery, eating nothing, drinking little, I thought it, too.

My throat is burning with acid, but at least I’ll be thinner.

I can’t do more than wave at my worried children, but at least I’ll be thinner.

Daily life has stopped as I know it, but at least I’ll be thinner.

Those thoughts are troublesome enough, but there was another layer. I’ve worked hard to leave diet culture behind after years of mental work following extreme weight loss. I’ve made tremendous progress, but this showed me firsthand how easy to it was to slip on that old skin as soon as my defenses were down.

There’s a reason being “one stomach flu away from my goal weight” is a part of the zeitgeist. Our cultural obsession with weight loss, thinness, and anti-fatness has been discussed by far wiser minds than mine. All I know is that, in the years since having my children, receiving special needs diagnoses, getting through a pandemic, aging, grieving and so much more, my body has changed.

And I love it still. More, even.

Being curled up on my back for days, unable to do more than listen to Emily Cooper wooing French clients and eating pain au chocolat, I am acutely aware of how much I need my body … and how little the extra roll around my stomach matters to my happiness.

/////////////

So how much weight did you lose? isn’t even a question I can answer. I haven’t stood on a home scale in years. As soon as I realized the toll those numbers had on my mental health, I stepped away—literally. I reframed my pursuit of feeling better by giving up the numbers game all together.

Once I stopped counting calories (or “points”) and assigning moral value to foods, something crazy happened: I could actually pick up on and listen to my body’s needs. I haven’t reverted to wild binge behavior, consuming nothing but carbonara and pies; mindful eating is all about balance. When I got rid of the restrictive rules and focused on eating for satisfaction and fullness, physically and emotionally? Well, I was free.

Since then, I’ve lost my appetite. For many, many things, actually! Such as:

  • Caring about VBO.
  • Wasting precious time discussing ways to shave calories off otherwise-satisfying foods.
  • Worrying if I look heavy, or fretting when called fat. It’s not a four-letter word.
  • Bonding sessions over the endless pursuit of a smaller body.
  • Denial of simple pleasures, such as sweet cream in my morning coffee. Life is short, my friends.

I’m not afraid to gain weight. I am afraid to be too tired, weak, or unwell to care for my family. So instead of numbers, I focus on physical movement: walking, getting up and about. I eat in a way that makes me feel nourished and focused. And I work daily on my mental health and resilience, building myself up so I can be stable and leaned on by others.

It’s all a work in progress (clearly). But I make small strides all the time. I recently bought new jeans, for example, and y’all—these are dream pants. Seriously. I feel so good in them. Comfortable. Confident. Put-together.

They’re also the biggest size I’ve worn since … well, maternity wear. Or ever.

Upon realizing her “normal” size no longer worked, previous me would have rejected buying anything else to comfortably clothe her body. I would have tried to use that as fuel to shrink, because that’s what women are expected to do. When I inevitably failed to lose pounds, never again coming close to that mythical 40-pound weight loss back when deprivation was my full-time job, I would have started a blame cycle all over again.

Now? Now I know better. I know they’re just pants. Adorable, well-fitting, nonjudgmental pants.

And I deserve to wear them.

So do you. We all do.

The messy best we can

/ Meg / 9 Comments

I’ve never grieved before. Not like this.

I don’t know how to do it.

I don’t know where to start; I don’t know where it ends. We had so little warning. And this road map? It’s full of unnamed roads, dead ends.

We lost Alex in August. It happened so fast. My mother-in-law became sick, then rapidly sicker, and it was only weeks before we were forced to stare at the horrible truth: we had days together, not weeks. Not months. Certainly not years . . . the ones we’d planned to fill with kids’ dance recitals, long conversations, puzzles. Unbroken stretches of beach. Hot tea and cocoa at midnight. Sunshine.

It’s been inky-dark for six weeks now.

Grief has been a strange and unwelcome bedfellow. I’ve never lost someone so close to me—someone loved so dearly by everyone . . . especially my father-in-law, husband, children, and me.

We had no idea she was sick.

She had no idea she was sick.

When we finally heard it—cancer, after months of wrong and incomplete diagnoses, non-answers for her pain—I felt my stomach fall to my summer-scuffed toes. It was late June. And it was in her bones.

I cried for days. In the shower. On my lunch breaks. In my office. And I yelled. I punched my steering wheel alone in my car, after dropping my kids at summer camp, where I wouldn’t alarm my own shell-shocked husband. I stood in the kitchen and stirred pots of boxed mac and cheese with a spoon in one hand, crumpled tissues in the other. I dried my face each time my children ran in, sucking down the panic rising in my chest.

She was gone in just five weeks.

I’ve had time—so much time, really—to think about what made her so special. And the truth is that I couldn’t appreciate so much of what made her an outstanding mother until I became one myself. From the moment Oliver came crashing into the world, upending everything we knew and then some, I had her standing sentry—guiding us, laughing with us, crying with us. And cooking for us. Alex’s love language was gifts, and meals were part of her thoughtfulness. When all else failed (as it sometimes did), she fed us.

Nothing in my brain computes this loss. I’ve fretted endlessly about how to help my husband and children while feeling mired in despair myself. The kids—now 7 and 5—say little, afraid to set off more tears. I do let them see my grief, as all the experts share, but in slivers; I let them cry with me, encouraging them to share. We talk about the good times. We look at pictures.

There’s just so much I want to remember.

Remember her generosity. Her big laugh. Her way of making everyone feel comfortable and important in her presence. The genuine love she had for her family and friends—all of them. The way she took ordinary days and infused them with creativity, patience, and fun.

And she was all about action. I think of the time she painted our bedroom closet. When she rode with me to Spencer’s surgery (plus the realization that I, his wife, would be the one now receiving the surgeon’s call). The time she took the 3 a.m. feeding so Spence and I could sleep, giving us our first unbroken stretch of rest since Oliver came home from the NICU.

We loved all of the same things . . . and the same man. And Alex never seemed to question my presence at the side of her beloved only son. Now the mother of two dear children myself, I have a new appreciation for how hard that could have been.

Alex saw me at my absolute best and my frightening worst. And she never begrudged me any of it. She could absorb my pain, particularly the fear and exhaustion of new parenthood, without taking it personally. Even 360 miles away, Alex was never a guest in our home; she and my father-in-law are part of our home. Hearing her slippered feet on the stairs and whispered bedtime stories was a balm for my soul, too. I breathed easier, slept easier, when she was here.

I’d say I don’t know what we’re going to do without her, but I do: what we must. We’re going to keep moving. Appreciating the little things. Digging deep to feel grateful for the time we had with her—the love she inspired, and the love that continues still.

We’re going to do the messy best we can.