What I have failed to do...

Right now I am separating baby/toddler clothing into three piles. "Donate" or "Keepsake Clothing" or "Needs Now." Every time I go through this process, I pour myself a big glass of red wine and let myself cry over everything that goes in "Keepsake Clothing" or "Donate." The donation pile is a growing reminder that we are thinking that our daughter will be our only child. Our family feels complete. She is great, easy and fun, but I don't think I can hack this twice, and I should just leave things as is. So I cry a little, big deal. I don't need to bring another person into the world. There are plenty of people already, yet I love the person I did bring into the world so much. Tonight the ritual is holding up every piece of clothing to my face to breathe that person in before tossing it in "Donate."

God, why is motherhood such psycho-love? I need a restraining order.

And why does a sub-two-year-old have this much clothing, you ask? Because most mothers do not do what I am doing tonight. Most mothers loiter outside of Babies-R-US, wiping drool from their faces every time they spot a swelling woman. When I gave birth, I received clothing from mothers I grew up with, mothers I had just met, mothers I didn't know...and yes, much of this clothing came complete with spit-up-stain-not-of-my-own-DNA. As for that misunderstanding that a stork delivers a baby? Oh no, you gotta have sex for that baby. That stork delivers every other mother's baby's stuff...and the story of when that baby used, wore and spit-up on that stuff. It is almost as if donating an item to charity would be like handing your Mom-Card over to the poor. But seeing someone else's kid of your same social status wear or play with something that your kid wore or played with? It must be pure joy without the vaginal tearing. I cannot insert judgment here because I see how hard it is to grasp the fact that your maternal life is evolving, or that you will never use the 0-3 month pumpkin costume or the "Baby's First Christmas" PJ set again. Yet tonight this momma is facing it...Me, 16,000 outfits and a big glass of wine.

My husband is out of town. We have a house showing in the morning. We have to move and I don't want to. I keep screwing up at work. My boss is my father and it kills him to keep telling me that I am screwing up. I keep cleaning the same floors over and over, picking up my same long, graying hairs. Dora The Explorer gets to spend more time with my daughter than I do. I have to travel all next week, which has ruined my appetite this week. Want to lose a quick 7 pounds? Think about leaving your child for a week. You won't fail. I have friends that need to be called. I have childless friends that need to be called, and these friends think I am a schlump. I can hear their thoughts in their strained voicemails, "Call me when you get a chance...," like that chance would be when I decide to stop eating the bon-bons off my breasts and pick up the phone. The breaking point tonight was when I was so distracted giving my daughter a bath, I turned off the cold water faucet a whole 0.000001 seconds before turning off the hot water faucet. In toddler time, this was just enough to stick a hand in the burning stream of water. Her screaming and the guilt did me in, and I curled up on the bathroom floor and wept. Seeing this, my daughter decided that this was the perfect moment to show me how over it she was by lobbing yellow, squeaky ducks at my head.

To summarize, I am done procreating, and I am failing as a mother, wife, home keeper, employee and friend.

There is also this ache that I cannot name. This pain that I do not know much about, because I am in denial by saying that "I just can't watch the news anymore." You don't have to admit to me that you have said these words this week, but I know you did. We all did, all of us who are lucky enough to have the option. Most of us did not take enough math classes to even conceive of the number of lives that were lost in China and in Myanmar this week. Once you let yourself go there, to think about those numbers, or to consider one individual that was lost...you cannot turn back.

So that is what I am doing. Separating clothing, breathing in and letting go. And tears, there are tears. Not over the summary of woes that plague my mind, but over the soul-weight of the Earth that is so much lighter tonight. I am pretty sure I needed most of those souls. We need those souls. We need the smile in the grocery store aisle, the hand that writes the donation check, the arms that embrace the elderly and the one who lobbs the squeaky duck at a tired head.

What would be said anyway? Of these mere things that I am carefully piling and holding onto from the mother in China or Myanmar who is mother no more?