Five

I am a mom of five. It feels strange saying, but I am. I walk around most days, sleep deprived, slightly smelly, in yoga pants, wearing my most precious possession, a simple wire nest with five little pearl beads. Five little beads for five little babies. You can watch people do the math as they look at my necklace, at me, then at my little people gathered around me, trying to make the math work. I know exactly how they feel, I desperately want the math to work too. 

I want the math to work on Monday mornings, when I'm sitting with a hot cup of coffee watching my two boys laugh over cartoons as their sister sleeps in the swing. I want the math to work while we are buckling our three into the van for a family outing. I long for the math to add up on Christmas morning, birthdays, and most of all mothers day. I'm desperate for the math to work when we line up for a family photo. Three little smiling faces, unknowing that two are missing. 

I try to make the math work while missing two little faces. Two little faces that I never got to see, two little faces that I never got to know. My two missing little people that I never got to hold.

There's a desperate grief in miscarriage. A desperation to have something, anything to hold on too, something to remember, something for others to remember. It leaves a hole in your family that others don't see, but that you feel. It settles into you, becomes a part of you, soaking into your essence, like unfinished business. A part of you stays in waiting, waiting for what is missing. Your heart knows the cycle wasn't complete, and you being to live in it.  You being to live in not quite complete, but not completely broken.

There are moments, moments where the boys are fighting, because one wants play ninja so natural he picks the fight with the other, just so he'll play too. Moments where the washer is going, the baby is crying needing to be feed, someone is running around naked, you realize that smell is actually you, as you slide cold coffee into the microwave for the 4th time, and the power goes off, because you forgot to pay the bill, again.

Those moments, you don't forget, you just don't remember. Life floods over the pain, the loss. Your mind becomes filled with all the task of motherhood, the dishes, the laundry, dinner, diaper changes, bedtime routines, and for a moment you are so focused on the here and now that you forget the wishes. The wishes that come in the quite, the wishes of having all five little people in my nest.

Sometimes you sit straining to make the math work, wondering how all your little people would fit together, how personalities would mesh, what would be the same, what would be different.

Would our missing little people have the wild mowak that our baby girl has, would they be fiery independence and slightly stubbornness like our oldest. A calm, hysterical, nudist like our middlest? Or two other totally different balls of personality, unknown to our family dynamic? Would we have four boys, and one girl? Two boys, and three girls? Or one more of each? Would or life be completely different, or absolutely the same?

Life feels split between these two extremes. You never know what side you will fall on. One moment life is flooding over you, the next your heart flooding on to the floor. Day by day, moment by moment, you never know where your going to fall. You watch people try to do the math, and answer the questions people are scared to ask. 

Yes, I am a mother of five.
Yes, we had two miscarriages.
Yes, the math doesn't work, its hard, its sad, it hurts, but its okay.

Because I'm a mom and that's all I ever wanted to be.