You are nine months old now. You have officially lived outside of my body, just as long as you were inside of it.

There’s something about this nine month mark. I felt it with your sister too. There’s an independence that comes with it, an attachment that is less to me, and more to the world around you. You are here and you are part of it all, and this is something you have begun to grasp.

I already can’t quite remember a time when you weren’t part of my life. I mean, of course I can remember all those 33 years before you arrived, but what I mean is that I can’t imagine not knowing you. I can’t imagine not being your mama, not being a guide for your sweet little soul.

And Juliette? You are sweet. So incredibly sweet. You are a happy little thing. You laugh all the time, even when you’re uncomfortable. You just laugh. You are watchful and you are quick to smile. I’ve seen you look around a room, just waiting to catch someone’s eye so that the moment you do, you can give them one of your quiet little smiles.

Life has been complicated at home lately, your dad and I trying hard to figure out our careers and finances and the future. Things seem uncertain much of the time and sometimes the stress of it all makes me feel like I can’t breathe. But then I look at you and your sister and I find myself able to take another breath.

We could be anywhere, on an airplane, in our living room, in the car in the morning on the way to take Vera to school, and the two of you are looking at each other. Vera is making some weird face, with an even weirder noise to go along with it, and your eyes are on hers, riveted by whatever she is doing, a small smile edging across your lips. And I realize that no matter how sticky or stressful life may be, as long as it’s not that way for you or Vera, then everything will be okay.

That’s what parents do, I suppose. They shield us from the worries of the world, for as long as they can. And that’s why we, as adults, often bemoan how hard it is to be a grown-up. And it is hard. Oh, how I wish I could go back to being a kid, or even a teenager, when my biggest worries were what to wear to school, what boy to like, and which quiz not to study for. I mean, of course it all felt bigger than that at the time, but looking back? Those seem like simple things.

Life is big, my sweet girl. It’s bigger and longer and messier and more wonderful than you or I even really know. But here’s the thing. It’s also what you want it to be. Life is the story you tell yourself it is. It’s the dream you choose to believe is real. It’s the path you thought you shouldn’t take, but then did. It’s the heart, so full of love you’re blinded by it.

It’s you.

And me.

And everything that is to come.

Love,

Mom

Dear Girls,

I’ve been missing my mom a lot lately. So often during my days I find myself staring off into oblivion, wishing I could talk to her about all the things that are running through my head. I don’t know if she would have any answers for me, not the ones I’m looking for anyway (I don’t think anyone has those), but I know that she knew me, and that with just a few words she would be able to see right into the depths of what it is I’m feeling these days. She would be able to tell me where I am, even if she couldn’t explain why.

I hope that I get to know you girls like that too. That I come to understand who you are deep, deep down, even if you are very different from who I am. But I know that even if the three of us end up on completely different paths, you’ll still look to me over and over throughout your lives. I will become the inevitable barometer against which you measure your actions.

Just as I do with my own mother, you will find yourself evaluating your choices against mine. My mother did this. My mother did not do that. My mother was this age when she did this. My mother always reacted this way when that happened. And there will be no right or wrong ways of being, just measurements. There will be a thousand things I do that you will disagree with, and another thousand that you will want to copy word for word. There will be parts of who I am that will make you shake your head and swear up and down to yourself that you will never, ever be. There will be other things about me that you will envy or try to emulate for all of your days to come.

I am more aware than ever that this is beginning to unfold, that the ties between the three of us are winding around one another, threading into a larger cord that stretches back through my mother and hers, and the women who came before them, each of us weaving ourselves into something that holds us together no matter who we become.

My mother was forty when I was born. She had been married twice before my father, but I was her first (and only) child. Becoming a mother changed (enhanced?) everything about who she was. Long after she was gone my father used to shake his head and wonder what would have become of her had he not met and married and created a child with her. He would chuckle with mild scorn in his voice about “that damn walk up apartment” she was living in in Manhattan, all of her weird artist friends, her debt and her flailing career choices.

At times I chuckled with him, shaking my head. My silly mom, I’d agree. But now I think about her, living her life in New York, just being whoever she was. If my father hadn’t come along, if I had never been born, that would have been okay too, I think. Because she knew how to love. She loved people and moments and places and food and art and music. She loved really simple things, she knew how to sink down into the essence of something, how to be within a thing. Some of my most favorite moments in my own life I attribute to her, if only because she taught me how to take them in, how to lean back in the seat of a convertible to look up at the night sky, how to be quiet with my ear to the grass, listening to the earth move, and how to see myself even when I’m alone.

I don’t know what I will teach the two of you, what lasting lessons I will impart, but I hope that they will be as profound as the ones my mother left me with. I am a complicated woman, I know. I have so many faults, so many impulses and fears and soft sides, so many hard sides too. You will run up against them over and over, and maybe with time you’ll smooth down all the edges of me, like waves against stones. You’ll loosen me, undo me, create me, just as I did with my own mother.

With all my heart,

Mom

Last night I did something terrible. I did the thing that no mother is supposed to ever do. Your sister asked me if I love her more than you, and I said yes.

I know, I know. You’re going to hold this over me forever. But it’s not even true. That thing that everyone said would happen about my heart expanding to easily and simply love you both happened. It’s just that I miss your sister sometimes these days. She’s growing up so fast, and these last six months with you here have been such a big change, and last night in her room, at the end of a big party and a long day, I simply wanted her to know that I love her more than I could possibly ever explain.

Except I thought that by answering yes to that question, just maybe I could explain it. So I said yes.

The funny thing is that I’m glad I said it now, if only because of what happened next. At first she smiled and looked at me and nodded. She pursed her lips in this smug little way, and for just a moment she look satisfied. But then she looked down at your little head, resting in slumber on my chest and she shook hers, raising her eyes to meet mine with a new determination. “No, mom. You love us both the same. You love Jules.” and she reached out and stroked your soft, downey hair, smiling as she did so.

In that moment I realized that I knew nothing about love before I had the two of you. Nothing.

I’m writing this letter my dear, because you are six months old. Well, at least I meant to write this letter to you when you were six months old and now you’re just a week or so shy of seven months. But such is the way of our life right now. A few things here and there seem to slip through the cracks, but over all I think we’re doing pretty well. Life as a family of four is all you’ll ever have known, but I have to admit that it took some adjusting on our part.

The last year was a big, crazy, wonderful, hard one and your entrance to it was part of all of that. Now that I’ve done it twice, I’ve decided that it’s just not easy to bring a new person into the world. It requires an incredible amount of time and energy and love and commitment, and sometimes the houseplants die and the cats get depressed and you forget to write letters on the exact day you’re supposed to. But we wouldn’t want it to be easy, would we? Then none of it would matter so much.

And you, my little dear, matter so much. It all matters so much.

My absolute favorite part of your life, and your time with us so far, has been watching the relationship between you and your sister develop. It’s something I never could have imagined. I’ll probably tell you and Veronica this so many times that you’ll be rolling your eyes at me in no time, but I didn’t have siblings growing up and it just blows my mind in a thousand ways to see you two together. What an extraordinary gift. I can only think that my life would have been infinitely better had I had a sibling to share it with. I can only think that you will be forever lucky to have each other.

I know you’re going to have times where you detest each other and wish you were an only child, but I hope the love between you will always be there. I told you that story at the beginning of this story in hopes of revealing to you just how much Veronica loves you. I mean really, she’s three and a half and definitely the most selfish, self-centered person I know. She doesn’t care when myself and your dad are sick or when we’re working or trying to do something. It’s her, her, her, all the time.

Except when it comes to you. When it comes to you she has all the compassion in the world.

But enough about your sister. More about you.

You are the cutest baby in the entire world. Seriously. I think all babies are cute but gah, you just kill me. You have fat little thighs and bright blue eyes. You have the sweetest downey blond hair that I call your duckling fuzz. You smile with your whole body when you see me, your mouth breaking open in this big silent grin, and then your whole little being squirming in response. You have long fingers and soft cheeks. You gurgle and coo and babble and your Dad is oh-so fond of your funny low voice.

You’re just on the verge of crawling, but haven’t gotten there quite yet. You have one little tooth coming up on the bottom, and you’ve been very vocal about how much pain it’s causing you. You’re pretty good at taking naps, but very good at sleeping in bed with me all night — something that I’ve let you get away with for too long now. But oh it’s sweet. I love snuggling with you, love waking up to your happy little face, your eyes shining in the dark dawn of the morning at me, your warm little body scootched up to mine under the covers.

You’re wildly clingy right now, wanting to be held by pretty much only me, although you’ll let your dad take you some of the time. But oh, you love to flirt with everyone, even reaching out as though you want them to hold you. And then the minute they do you twist back around for me, breaking their hearts just a tiny bit. Everyone wants to hold a sweet little dumpling like you.

Listen to me going on. Would you believe me if I told you that I’m not a baby person? Really, I’m not. Before you girls I didn’t care one wink about babies. I could walk into a room full of them and not even notice them. That’s changed a bit, although I mostly just have eyes for you and your sister. I’m soaking up this time with you both, feeling frantic how short it will be, this time when I get to hold you both close, when I pick you up and press you to me.

I’m taking you to Atlanta with me this weekend. Just you and me. Veronica will stay home with her dad, and you and I will fly to the place where I grew up. I’m besotted with anxiety and emotion about leaving your sister here. I haven’t been away from her in almost a full year, and I feel quite nervous about dividing our little family up, if even for four days, but I also think it will be nice to have some time just the two of us. I know you’re a tiny baby, but I want to show you where I was born, where I grew up. I want to whisper all the things I’ll think about as we travel through the world together.

Babies are funny. I feel like I know you, yet I don’t know you. Now that Vera is a little person I can look back on her at six months and I can see that she was who she was all along, just in the same way that you are already who you are.

Anyway, happy half a year my sweet little snack. These are my thoughts, my confessions. I’d rather you know all the parts of your mother, the good, the disappointing, the mistakes, the aspirations, and all the happy accidents that make up my parenting you.

Love,

Mom