It was weirdly easy to do, an indication, I think, of just how much I needed to get away.

I think the most startling thing for me about being a parent, from the very first day, is how little time and energy I am able to devote to myself. And ten months into the existence of my second child, I’ve been feeling it more than ever. Most days I have time to do the very bare minimum in order to maintain my life. I respond to the emails that absolutely must be responded to, I get the dishes done, the kids fed and clothed and to school or playdates, I pay bills (not always on time) and make sure I’m on top of things when it comes to my work and private practice.

But that’s it. Our bathroom needed to be cleaned like two weeks ago. Half of our houseplants have died in the last six months, we’re out of milk right now, I haven’t posted a blog here in a week, I have four unlistened to voicemails, an absurd amount of email to respond to, and I could really use an update on my toenail polish.

Not to mention needing some time to just sit and be quiet with my thoughts.

So last week, with the aid of my husband who so amazingly agreed to take on the girls so I could do this, I hit the road.

To say it was exhilarating was an understatement.

My destination was the New Camoldi Hermitage, a Catholic monastery on a cliff in Big Sur, about five hours north of here. I first read about this place in Christina Haag’s memoir Come to the Edge, and have fantasized about going there ever since. The monastery offers silent retreats, as in meals taken in your room and a vow of silence while in residence. The thought both intimidated and utterly beguiled me.

I booked two nights, and planned three days of driving, reading, contemplation, and silence. I took with me 5 books of poetry, three boxes of old letters from three different people, two journals, and my Kindle which is filled with hundreds of books. There are some things I’ve been trying to get clear on in my life these days, and these things seemed like they might be helpful.

When I first set out I intended to drive straight up there so I could just get on with being quiet. But the moment that I was driving, windows down, sunroof open, music loud, I felt so wide open and free.

The coast was wild and beautiful and the road stretched out in front of me and I began to stop every thirty minutes or so, pretty much each time I saw a beautiful spot. I would park and get out of the car and I would stand at the edge of the land and breathe in the ocean air and remember what it felt like to just be me.

It had been so, so long since I’d been alone. At least alone with the knowledge that there was more alone time coming. Usually I’m alone with twenty minutes to spare, and a panicky feeling that the seconds are just bleeding out.

But not on Sunday. On Sunday, with two whole days laid out before me, I felt like I could breathe.

I arrived at the monastery in the late afternoon. It was a two mile drive up a mountain and this bench was half way there. Of course, I stopped.

In fact, I made a point of sitting on this bench at least twice a day for all three days. An experience I’ll probably never forget.

My room was plain, and it was perfect.

There was a private garden beyond those windows, that looked at the sea. And there were walls so tall that I had utter privacy, standing there looking out into the distance.

Inside I unpacked all of my things, my books and boxes of letters and journals, and then I stood there, just breathing. I had no cell reception and there was no wifi. I was truly cut off, disconnected from the world I know.

It was both unnerving, and calming.

Over the next two days I spent a lot of time in that room. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Journal entries, letters, a new book idea, and more letters.

I read too. I read through all the letters I brought. I read all five of those books of poetry. I read a couple of books on my Kindle. (Man, there are a lot of hours in the day when you’re not tending to children.)

I also went for a lot of walks, all around the monastery. I wish I could tell you how good the air smelled, wish I could send some of that right through this screen and into your world.

I took this photo in the early evening on my first night, on a walk around the grounds. The moon was high up in the sky and I was thinking about my friend Julie, and something she wrote in a letter to me a long time ago.

I took this one the next morning. I had woken to the bells ringing in the chapel and outside the fog kissed the dawn.

I took this one later in the day, the sky a resilient kind of blue. I thought about how Vera would have insisted that it was aqua, and how much she has changed the entire scope of my life.

I went for a drive on my second day and I walked on this beach for a long time. I felt wildly lonely, in a really important way.

The truth is that I could have stayed up there for  a week, maybe even longer. On the third day when I drove down that mountain, stopping at the bench for the last time, I felt like I was only just getting started. My second night there had been hard. I felt alone, and vulnerable, all of my defenses distractions stripped away, the real voices in my head louder than ever.

I could hear myself.

I guess that’s what it was.

I could hear myself.

Some of what I heard was exactly what I expected, some of it surprising. Some of it was heartbreaking and some of it was soothing. But it took a couple of days to even just get there, making me realize how little I hear myself back here in my regular life, my life filled with text messages and Instagram, with a thousand emails a day, with my kids pulling at my pant legs and school drop-offs and pick-ups to be on time to, with not enough sleep, and more than enough of everything else.

I came home knowing that I have to find that space more often. I have to work to create that space more often. We all do, us moms and dads. Parenthood can be blindsiding. It takes over before we even realize what’s happened. But the good thing, is that those voices within, the ones we used to be able to hear more clearly, those voices never really go away.

At least mine didn’t.

And even though my time away wasn’t long enough, it was. At least for these two.

(Caught in action by my sneaky husband.)

For the most part, I don’t think I know the first thing about motherhood. I constantly have the feeling that I’m the mom in the room who knows the least about raising children, that I’m the one doing it wrong. That I’m the one who hasn’t read the books, hasn’t researched the schools. I’m the one who forgot to sign up for the right classes, had no idea I could do this or that, or worse, that I should be doing this or that.

At any given moment I feel like the least prepared/knowledgeable/informed/creative mama in the lot of us.

For instance:

I’m terrible at sleep-training. Juliette is still sleeping full nights in bed with me and is, at this very moment, taking her morning nap in the ergo on my chest as I stand at a dresser writing this. I’m still trying to figure out discipline techniques with Veronica and I don’t even really know what that means besides me getting frustrated and yelling, then lots of apologetic snuggling, then usually bribery in the form of chocolate.

And those are just today’s issues. The list is endless.

Most of the time I feel like motherhood is this big, crazy thing that’s just happening to me. I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water and that, at best, I’m simply reacting to something that keeps coming at me. I’ve said this before, and it’s the thing I say when I’m trying to apologize for my parenting short-comings, but I just never really thought about being a mom. It wasn’t something I ever longed for or dreamed about, or pictured for myself. There are lots of other things in my life that I’ve been plotting since childhood — traveling and writing and great romantic love, and when those things have arrived they’ve felt much different than motherhood has.

To me , becoming a mother has felt like being forced to jump out of an airplane, figuring out how to use a parachute mid-air, and then landing in a country I’ve never even heard of , where I certainly don’t speak the language or know the customs. It’s been a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-let’s-try-this-hope-it-works kind of experience. For me.

At playdates in the park and in the beautiful, put-together homes of my friends where their kids have Etsy-designed nurseries and playrooms and toy kitchen sets and fancy high chairs and just even dishwashers in the real kitchens, my heart sinks, and over and over again, I feel like a failure. I feel like I’m doing it all wrong, that I shouldn’t have just let motherhood happen to me like this, that I should have been more prepared, that I should have been running at this huge experience head-on in order to greet it and grab it and be the best possible mom I can be.

Instead I just stuff my kids back in the double stroller and rush home to rearrange the photos on Veronica’s wall, briefly reorganize her toys and give myself a lengthy chastisement for letting her have too much pink, plastic stuff. And then the next day I give in to her whining and let her pick out a Barbie at Target. See? Utter disaster.

The truth is that I rarely even let myself read mom blogs. Over the holidays I indulged in a few and then I spent Christmas Eve in a dejected state, making lists of all the ways in which I need to be a better mom in the year to come. I got out my notebook and made lists of traditions I want to start, and creative projects I want to do, and all throughout, I had this terrible panicky feeling that I’m right in the throes of this big, important time with my girls and I’m not giving them what they deserve.

However, despite all of the above, I don’t think I’m a bad mom. I love these two little girls like I’ve loved nothing else in the great, wide world. Becoming a mother has meant fulfilling the biggest dream I never had. It’s just that all that comes with it is so confusing and there is so much pressure to do it right, to make it pretty and picture-perfect and it so rarely ever is. The truth is that I don’t think I’ll ever be the mother I’m supposed to be. And I think that’s okay. I also think I’m not alone in feeling this way.

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