As with all new things, she was very nervous and shy in the beginning. We were the first ones to arrive and she sat solemnly on the bench while her teacher fitted her for ballet slippers. Vera wouldn’t utter a word, no matter how many questions her sweet instructor used to try to engage her, and it was all I could do to not crawl inside her head just to hear her nervous little thoughts.

Finally the other students began to arrive and the teacher led Veronica into the room. We had talked all about ballet school through the holidays and into the new year and I knew once she got in there, and once her one of her friends arrived, she would begin to open up, and she did. Juliette and I watched from behind the viewing window as Veronica sat in a circle with the other little ballerinas to stretch. Within minutes she had an expression of pure wonderment and happiness on her face.

As a mother, I continually find myself on the other side of everything. Over and over I seem to be standing where my own mother stood, and in those moments I can feel her flood through me. In flashes I revisit my own tap and ballet classes, the ones in which I so frivolously giggled at the bar with my friends while the other moms watched on. Doing it over again from this side is like getting to walk back into those memories all over, while simultaneously getting to step into my own mother’s shoes, an experience I never fail to relish.

Through all of this I just end up feeling my own mother’s love for me come swelling up around me all over again, and it is something I never expected to find again.

(I somehow think that  entitles me to take one of these self-aggrandizing phone portraits in which I angle the camera just so that all the best parts of my face are highlighted, and none of the worst. For the record, and because you’re probably making guesses already, I only did one retake. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad one.)

It’s been a nice day so far. I went to the OB (nothing exciting happening baby-wise yet, although I’m due three weeks from tomorrow) and then I went to Target to finish getting everything I’ll need for Vera’s birthday in a few weeks. I want to be prepared in case I go into labor before, during or after her birthday. When I came home Greg and Vera had a chocolate croissant with a candle in it waiting for me. For any new or potential parents reading this, let me just say that the first birthday in which your kid can actually sing Happy Birthday to you, will probably be your best birthday ever.

Birthdays have been weird for me for a long time. I guess ever since my mother died they’ve been kind of flat. And now that I am a mom, I get why. There will probably never be anyone as excited about your birthday as the woman who carried you around in her body for nine months and then finally expelled you into her very own arms one fine day. It’s a momentous occasion. With Vera’s birthday just weeks away, as well as the pending arrival of number baby number two, I’ve been thinking an awful lot about the day I gave birth three years ago.

Giving birth is the strangest combination of joining and separating. On one hand, you’re finally releasing the creature who has utterly taken over your body for months and months, and on the other hand, you’re gaining a person you will love more deeply than anyone else in the entire world. I miss my mom just thinking about it. She was crazy about my birthday every year, really wanting to make it the most special day possible, and pretty much always succeeding. It kind of feels wrong to have a birthday without her here to celebrate it with. Like I said, I never understood why it’s felt this way all this time until these last few years. Vera’s birthday probably means more to me than it ever will to her.

I drove home from my friend Liz’s house last night, along the streaming 405 freeway with the setting sun eclipsed by the moon and just visible through the clouds, thinking about what the next year of my life will be like. 34. A new baby, another book to work on and hopefully sell. A trip to Australia, the continued building of my therapy practice here in Los Angeles. My aunt is an astrologer and she wrote to say that the next several years are going to be very industrious and work-oriented for me. I believe her. I can feel it all swelling. I look forward to it though. That’s what this time is about anyway right? Our thirties? Building our adult selves? God knows, I spent enough time in my twenties indulging my adult self. I’m happy to work on the building part now.

Anyway, so 34 years ago today my mother gave birth to me. She was forty years old. It was spring in Atlanta and she and my father drove me home among the dogwoods and blooming daffodils and spent that summer becoming parents together.

Thirty years ago today we had one of a dozen annual pool parties in which my mother invited at least 75 people and there were balloons and cake and babysitters to watch the kids while the parents got buzzed on mint juleps and margaritas from the bar.

Nineteen years ago today I turned fifteen and I got my learner’s permit and then came home to a surprise party my mother organized with all of my girlfriends. We ate pizza and got dressed up and then a limo came and took us to the movies. I wanted to die of both gratitude and embarrassment.

Thirteen years ago I turned twenty-one while living in New York City. I went to the bar and ordered the obligatory cocktail, but the waitress didn’t bother to check my drivers license. It wasn’t a big deal anyway since I’d had a fake ID for three years. My name on that ID was Barbara Fine — a woman I’d never met but who’d been a friend of my mother’s in her mythical NYC days.

Nine years ago I spent my birthday in Las Vegas with my boyfriend and a few friends. I had been living in Los Angeles for under a year and I’ll never forget the way the ringing of the slot machines sounded that day while I stood in the casino, my cell phone pressed to my ear, listening to my father tell me the results of his most recent biopsy. Even though it was my birthday I’d begged him not to hold back the news. He would die just three months later.

Five years ago today my grandmother died. And because of her death I got on a plane to Cape Cod a week later for her memorial service. Instead of returning to Los Angeles at the end of that trip I stopped in Chicago and met the man who is now my husband. Everyone said that Grandma died on my birthday so that I could meet Greg. Maybe it’s just one of those things we all say, but I will say that she did always want me to get married.

Three years ago today I was heavily pregnant with Vera. I stayed home from work that day thinking I was having mild contractions, but she wasn’t born for another three weeks.

One year ago today our Chicago friends threw us a going-away party on our deck. Our house was a maze of boxes and our car nearly packed and primed for the drive that would take us across the country and into California.

And now here I am, thirty-four, about to become a mother of two, taking these few quiet moments in the house while the laundry clacks and tumbles in the dryer, before Greg and Vera return to our little house in Santa Monica and we all go for a walk on the beach.

Life just keeps marching forward.

–

I have an essay on The Rumpus today about the incredible experience of writing that Letter in the Mail a couple of weeks ago. Did you know that for two weeks I’ve been receiving letters back from strangers every day? I got one from Greece on Saturday!

Also, our friends threw us the loveliest baby shower over the weekend. Feel free to peruse the photos.

Want to buy my book? Do so at any of the above!