Tea. I needed tea. That would help. I brewed a pot, nervously pacing my kitchen while I waited. I couldn’t sit, my thoughts wouldn’t form a straight line. As I finished putting the lid on my travel mug this morning and took my first blissful sip of tea, trying to breathe the knots of stress out of my shoulders, I heard it.

Screech.

 Bang.

 Boom.

 Ka-thud.

 Honk-bang.

The unmistakable sounds of a large traffic accident on the major street only a few houses away.

Before I could even think, I was out the front door, running. Phone in one hand, mug in the other.

At first, it didn’t look so bad. Two cars, pretty beaten up, sat right in the middle of the road, parts scattered everywhere. But then I looked down the ivy-covered embankment where everyone was gathered, and I saw the third car, twisted around the tree it had broken. A woman about my age sat trapped, blood streaming out of her nose and mouth, eyes glazed.

I dialed 911.

“911, please hold. Do not hang up or your call will be routed to the end of the line. 911, please hold for the next operator. Do not hang up or your call will be routed to the end of the line.”

“What the?” I looked at my phone, dumbstruck. Down in the ivy, a man was on his cell.

“Did someone call 911?” I yelled.

“Yeah, he’s on with them,” a guy yelled back.

Minutes ticked by, and a group of us could only stare from the top of the embankment. Where the hell were the first responders?

“Excuse me!” I turned, and a woman gestured out of an open car window. “I’m an emergency medicine doctor. Is everyone ok?”

“No, the woman down there is not ok, and she can’t get out,” I said. And just like that, this blessed angel, already in her scrubs for work, parked and skidded down to the car.

Where the hell were the first responders?

I called 911 again. “911, please hold. Do not hang up or your call will be routed to the end of the line.”

The two men who’d been in the cars on the street were now on the sidewalk, looking as helpless as I felt. They said they weren’t hurt, but it seemed impossible. I’d heard the noise, I could see the car parts scattered like confetti over the road. And this woman stuck down the hill. God, should we be trying to get her out? Was something going to explode?

Finally, sirens.

The firemen got down to the car and put a cervical collar on the woman and started working to free her from the twisted metal. I turned to go home, and saw one of the firemen stop by one of the other cars, kneel, put a finger to the fluid running from underneath it, and sniff.

“Um, it’s not going to blow up or anything, is it?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said. “It’s coolant. Just checking.”

I said my goodbyes to the two other drivers, who were both starting to shake, and turned and walked home.

Back in my kitchen, I sipped my now cool tea and tried to remember what had me so stressed.

Instead, all I could find was, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

I think that’s called perspective.

Why, yes, I do have a good reason for not having been around here all that much lately. I have a new obsession. It’s creative, it’s addictive … some might even call it better than chocolate.

It’s the Girl’s Guide to Web Design.

This is an incredibly meaty program created by Amanda Aitken Verrall, a talented web designer and owner of Better Than Chocolate Web Design. It contains 8 chapters of material with over 35 hours of video. You can start whenever you want and learn at your own pace – once you’re in, you have access to the course materials for life.

Amanda teaches you how to build WordPress sites, and she makes it fun. I’m only three chapters in, and I cannot tell you how much of a blast I’m having learning this stuff!

But the most important part of what I want to tell you is that the Girl’s Guide to Web Design is getting ready to be taken off the market. As of May 10 at 11:59 p.m., enrollment is closed. So if you’re at all interested in website design, I’d highly encourage you to get in now while you can. Because while the class is closed, Amanda is going to revamp it, and when it re-opens, the price will be significantly higher. Those who register now will have lifetime access to the course materials (and Facebook support group) throughout the transition period and for life, as well as all the new course materials (for life). It’s a seriously great deal.

So if you’re at all interested, please click here and register now. You won’t regret it!

*This post contains affiliate links

But Sunday is coming.

Through their first two years, I wrote, emailing volumes of twin stories to family and friends. My mother recently sent them all back, and I as I read, I realized that most of my memories from that time are gone, save for a general feeling of hopelessness, exhaustion, and panic.

Yet the words seem strangely familiar, a reflection in a store window. Through their lens I can appreciate that what seemed like an utterly black time did contain moments of beauty and grace, and that I was a good mother. Now my twins are six, and I am so thankful to my mother for preserving those words so I can put it all together and marvel at the panoramic puzzle that is twinship, starting from the beginning.

The Morse code tapped out in my distended belly was communication, but not necessarily with me. In my lower abdomen, my son slumbered, and under my ribcage, my daughter, feisty and awake, kicked restlessly. Wake up, she telegraphed.

A blow to my kidney made me gasp and my son answered. No. I’m sleeping. Stop kicking me.

She responded with a series of jabs. I want to be born already. This is boring.

Well, just stop moving. I’m trying to sleep. There’s not enough room in here to even think about being born.

Naturally, my daughter got her way.

Swaddled and in the same crib, they found peace only when they found each other. Their foreheads pressed together as they slept, breathing together, dreaming together, already forming a trinity of him and her and them.

Babble turned to first words in their language instead of mine. Deep philosophical conversations, from the sound of it, conducted entirely in twin-speak, and comprehensible only to the speakers.

They are each other’s security blankets, covering all manner of hurts and needs. A mother’s hug might soothe, but only the other half can make things whole.

My twins are two people, distinct in every way. One boy, one girl. One light, one dark. Photo negatives of each other in thought and in action. Where one has shadow, the other rushes to fill the space with light.

Now, I watch as the threads that connect them multiply, weaving a pattern on an invisible loom, using an ancient craft that can’t be taught. The rest of us are blessed enough to watch it happen, and as outsiders, we only catch glimpses of this gossamer mesh that binds, moments that leave us struck dumb with disbelief at the beauty of this communion. In those moments, I see God through my children, around my children, binding them together with the sticky silk of love.

This mesh forms a beautiful interweaving of lives and space and thoughts and touch that I will never fully understand, even as their mother. The threads that bind aren’t restraints; they’re a web of love and language and unspoken thoughts. If one needs the other, they snap back; a rubber band released. I watch, and I marvel, but I see through a haze, knowing the details will never be clear for anyone but the two of them.

UPDATE: The contest is now over, and we have our winners!

1st place and winner of a $300 Amazon gift card – Amy Pike

Tied for second and both winners of an $80 Amazon gift card – Renee Schuls-Jacobson and Julie DeVisser

Congratulations to all!

Now, I know you’re dying to see the answer key, so, without further ado, here it is!

Did you guess me?

Here’s me, then and now. How much have I changed?

Let me know if you guessed me, or if I was one of the ones you had trouble figuring out.

And go visit the other blogs below, and see their then and now pictures side by side!

I don’t remember my kindergarten teacher’s name, or what we did most of our days in class. It’s the strange details that stand in my memory. The floor in the hall was a marbled black and white; and in the classroom, a multicolored carpet. We wrote with chubby pencils, and the teacher and her assistant would walk around telling each of us how much our pencils were screaming because we were gripping them too tightly.

What I learned most in kindergarten had nothing to do with reading or writing. It was about talking – or, to be more accurate, how sometimes, you should not.

I was filled with curiosity, and everything sparked a “Why?” So I asked “Why?” Pretty much all day, every day.

And I talked.

And talked.

And talked.

The day that is seared into my brain is the one day I was disciplined. I was talking too much (shocker), and the teacher wrote my name on the chalkboard. That was standard practice: you get in trouble, your name went on the board.

Never in my short life had I been so mortified.

I’m still a talker. Big time. My husband has been known to say I have no filter. He may be right. But the first place I learned that my mouth can get me into trouble, and that sometimes, I might want to consider keeping it shut?

Kindergarten.

It’s not surprising that as an adult, I’ve become a blogger and a writer. Professions that remind me of that all-important lesson from kindergarten every single day. Seriously. I think about my name on that board every day. And then I usually open my mouth anyway, but at least it gives me pause, right?

So, to commemorate all the wonderful things we learned in kindergarten, as well as our amazing collection of haircuts, I’m joining some of the most fabulous bloggers around (there are 23 of us total) to do something super fun for you, dear readers. We present:

It’s very simple – just match the picture (with the assigned alphabet) to the blogger whose blog is listed below. What’s in it for you? Other than some fun (and it’s fun, promise), you can win an awesome $300 Amazon gift card. You can also get to know some of the bloggers listed here, if you don’t already. You can have a laugh at our expenses. Don’t worry, we did. Now, go forth and play!

Enter your answers on this form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qwSRhga4-tpR4_dmP7F8kKZrCLzRn0AnyVgtrnfssMs/viewform).

Participating bloggers, in alphabetical order:
Angela of Angela Amman

Angie of Angie Kinghorn

Deborah of Ask Doctor G

Robin of Farewell Stranger

Poppy of Funny or Snot

Leigh Ann of Genie in a Blog

Greta of Gfunkified

Jennifer of Jennifer P. Williams

Tonya of Letters for Lucas

Kiran of Masala Chica

Laura of Mommy Miracles

Natalie of Mommy of a Monster (and Twins)

Brittany of Mommy Words

Jessica of My Time as Mom

Kimberly of Reflections of Now

Tracy of Sellabit Mum

Elaine of The Miss Elaine-ous Life

Sarah of The Sunday Spill

Galit of These Little Waves

Kristin of Two Cannoli

Arnebya of What Now and Why

Kristin of What She Said

Alison of Writing, Wishing
Terms and conditions apply:

• You must be 18 years or older to enter.
• This contest is only open to residents of USA and Canada.
• This contest is open from March 11 – 15, 2013 (closes at 9pm Eastern).
• Visit the link above, where you will be able to enter your guess for each blogger pictured. (All information will be kept private.)
• The person to correctly match all the faces with their blog will win a $300 Amazon gift card. The two other closest guesses will each win one $80 Amazon gift card.
• If more than one person correctly matches all the faces with their blogs, we will randomly pick a winner via random.org.
• If no one guesses all the faces correctly, the winner will be the person who made the most correct guesses.
• This is not a sponsored post. Prizes are paid for out of the participating bloggers’ own pockets.
• You CAN enter more than once!
• Winners will be announced week of March 18.

“Name That Kindergartner” was inspired by the “Name That DIY Blogger” contest, over at My Blessed Life. 

Which is weird, because I’m a writer, not an actor, but I promise it all makes sense. You see, there’s this fabulous show called Listen To Your Mother. It’s produced by Ann Imig in multiple locations across the nation on or around Mother’s Day, and features women reading their essays about motherhood to a live audience.

I first heard about LTYM a couple of years ago, and made a promise to myself that if it ever came to North Carolina, I would submit something.

This year, LTYM is being produced in Raleigh by KeAnne Hoeg and Marty Long. Several talented and brave women will take the stage at Kenan Auditorium on May 8 to read their pieces on motherhood for an audience of 275 people.

I wrote a piece that I love, and submitted it. I’m so excited to have gotten an audition, but y’all? Writers don’t prepare for auditions well.

Obviously I started by printing my piece so I could practice reading it. Our printer helped by refusing to print. Upon fiddling with it (read: pressing a bunch of buttons), I told Mark it appeared to be dead. Which was really strange given that I’d turned it on just five minutes before and it was fine.

I won’t tell you how long it took me to figure out that the damn thing had come unplugged.

Also? Nobody would admit to unplugging it. My guess is that it had something to do with the twin six year olds running around the house.

After printing the piece and practicing, I decided I needed new lipstick and headed to the mall. Which was fine until I also decided I needed new jeans.

Warning: do not, ever, under any circumstances, do anything which requires you to be in front of a three way mirror trying on jeans the day before your LTYM audition.

If you are stupid enough to do so, do not wear a sorority t-shirt with a 1998 date stamped proudly on the front. Because then you must be prepared to resist the urge to clobber the 22 year old sales associates who say, “Wow, we were just talking about whether we could still wear our sorority t-shirts!” and “Wow, you don’t look that old!”

Also, if you happen to be married to a litigator and are practicing your readings on him, think twice about asking him to give you a brief Q&A practice session afterwards. Mark cross-examined the hell out of me.

On the bright side, I feel prepared for pretty much any question that might come my way. Whether remotely relevant or not.

And I now own a pair of jeans that are long enough, not faded or ripped, and make me want to chant “I’m sexy and I know it” as I walk.

Worth the trauma.

Wish me luck.

Or a broken leg.

Or both.

Instead, he waltzed in the door at 8:50.

And found me in dim lighting, listening to new-age yoga music, while rubbing an egg all over my body.

“Well, this is awkward,” I said.

Fortunately I’d told him about the conversation I’d had with our housekeeper last week. She’s from Ecuador, and when she took note of my latest health issue, she proclaimed that there was simply nothing for it but that I should see a witch.

“A witch?” I asked. “Seriously?”

“No, not a witch, exactly, it’s a, how you say, a witch doctor?”

“A witch doctor.”

“Yes, every village has one. They do all kinds of things with herbs and teas, and what would really help you is what they do with the egg.”

“So you mean, like a naturopath kind of thing? Or more like voodoo?”

“No, not like voodoo. They are Christian, and they pray over you. This thing with the egg – they take an egg, and they rub it all over your whole body, and they say prayers the whole time. They pray for evil spirits to leave you, for any negative energy to go away.”

“Negative energy?”

“Yes, like if someone is sending bad thoughts to you, ill wishing you. It can pull the negative energy out.”

“Like the evil eye?”

“No! Just bad energy. Negative thoughts. You should try it.”

“Yeah, well, where’s the local witch doctor? Charlotte’s a pretty big village.”

“I do not know one here. What I need to do is take you to Ecuador with me the next time I go.”

“I doubt Mark would be ok with that.”

“Well, you can do it on yourself. I do it sometimes when I am feeling low. You run the egg all over your body, and then you crack it into a glass of water. And it doesn’t look like a normal egg. It takes in all the bad things, and you can see bubbles and weird stuff in there. Try it. You will see.”

So I thought about it, told Mark about it, and asked him if he would perform this egg rite upon me. After he finished laughing his head off, he waggled his eyebrows and said he’d be happy to rub an egg all over my body. Especially if I didn’t mind ending the ritual by having said egg cracked over my head.

I declined, then turned to the internet for more information.

Come to find out, “witch doctor” isn’t exactly the right term. “Curandero” would be more accurate. And these traditional healers are the norm in certain parts of Ecuador, where they are called upon to cleanse a person of physical or spiritual illnesses. They use all manner of herbs, and yes, eggs. They’re totally legit.

I had eggs in the fridge.

And a free night.

And I will try (almost) anything once.

So I did. After letting the egg come to room temperature, I cleansed it thoroughly with a baby wipe (no sense getting salmonella during a spiritual cleansing, after all), then turned on my music and proceeded to pray and run the egg along what I thought were the acupuncture meridians of my body, concentrating hard on the points that dealt with migraines.

And then Mark walked in, just as I was entering this wonderful, meditative, trance-like state.

He stared.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I said.

“Um, well, it looks like you’re rubbing an egg all over yourself.”

“I am. But remember that thing Rosy told me about? About how this can rid you of negative energy and make you feel better? Well, that’s what I was trying to do. But you’ve totally harshed my mellow. Why are you home early?”

“We finished early.”

“Ok, well, I’m not done with this,” I gestured to the egg, “so I’m gonna need you to go upstairs for a while. I can’t mellow out and do this while you watch and laugh at me.”

So he did. And I put my yoga music back on and continued with the egg until I felt sufficiently cleansed.

Then, as Rosy directed, I cracked the egg into a glass of water. And it sure did look strange. However, the scientific part of my brain couldn’t help but remark that I don’t often crack eggs into glasses of water and that I have no idea what “normal” looks like in such a situation.

The new-age-hippie part of my brain snapped a picture of the egg on my phone and texted it to Rosy. She got back to me within minutes. The news was not good.

“Would u believe me if I tell you that I was just thinking about you and the egg conversation we had-crazy uh! (Big-eyed emoticon)-do you see those little bubbles and the whites thickening that is what some believe is the bad someone is wishing you – you have to throw this one in the toilet wishing it to go away – do the same thing for two more days and you’ll see the difference in each egg.”

I showed the evidence to Mark. “You see! Someone has been ill wishing me. It’s clear from the thickening of the whites, here, and these little bubbles.”

“Or, that could be how all eggs look when you crack them into a glass of water.”

“You need to open your mind,” I said, walking to the bathroom and flushing the egg, wishing fervently for all my bad ju-ju to go down the drain with it.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, let’s face it, you could have walked in on me doing something much worse.”

“Like what, the mailman?”

“I was going to offer to do you, but forget it.” Pause. “And by ‘do you,’ I meant do the egg thing to you.”

And so I may have figured out who is wishing me ill. It’s the guy on the other side of the bed who’s upset that he’s missing out on all the cleansing eggy ju-ju.

Or maybe not.

Part 1: You’re never ready

I love it when friends ask me, “How do you know when you’re ready to have a baby?”

My response is usually to smile and say, “Oh, you’ll just know.” And that’s true, in part. My body was screaming at me to reproduce when we started trying to get pregnant.

The part I leave out though, is that (and I feel I should whisper) you’re never going to be ready. Not for parenthood.

Infancy

Nothing can prepare you for the abrupt transition from a self-centered life to one that spins around a small, squalling infant (or two, in my case). You’re never ready for sleep-deprivation, for first cases of croup, for that first call to poison control, for that first heart-stopping moment you turn around in a store and don’t see your toddler. Or trips to the grocery store that involve projectile vomiting in the produce section.

And how could you prepare for those first well visits to the pediatrician with all those shots and screaming? I knew what was coming and still sobbed along with my babies. Of course, that might have been the postpartum depression, and let me tell you, you can’t ever be ready for that, either. No matter how sure you were that you were ready for motherhood, if you find yourself in a full fledged sobbing breakdown in your pediatrician’s waiting room, as I did, you’re going to think you made a mistake. Especially when two other women come over, pick up your screaming infants and ask if there’s someone they can call for you.

There is no prep course, no manual, no boot camp, no basic training that covers this.

Believe me, I looked.

Post-infancy

Post-babyhood, I assumed it could only get easier. No more diapers. Constant reflux, finally banished. Regular (mostly) full nights of sleep.

I could not have been more wrong. The hard part was just starting. Infancy is about taking care of your children’s most basic needs. The rest of their lives they need you to help them navigate the minefield of the world. And it’s a lot more dangerous that it used to be.

Bullying

There’s plenty of advice out there for what to do when your kids are bullied, but it’s mostly aimed at high school students. When it happens to your four-year old, what do you do? I raced down to the preschool and scooped up my baby boy, ice pack clamped to his bloody nose, and cried with him. That night I was torn between reading him “Chester Raccoon and the Big Bad Bully,” yet again, and giving him my grandfather’s advice to “just knock the crap out of him.”

I went with Chester. Invite the bully to play. Be nice. It’s a new era of parenting, after all.

But a few weeks later, when my daughter came home crying because of the same bully, I’d had enough. My grandfather’s voice came out of my mouth and I actually told her to hit him back. And she cried harder, and said, “I can’t do that, Mommy! I can’t hit him!”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not a bad girl!”

You can never be ready for this.

Finding the right words

How could you ever prepare for tender pieces of your own heart to walk around outside your body, finding a new way to get trampled each day? My daughter asks me if she’s fat, and what the numbers on the scale and her clothing tags mean. My son is left out of a game. Both have been taunted and teased. It’s normal stuff; childhood stuff. But it hurts so much more when you’re the one trying to make it better, and you don’t know what to say.

My children are the most priceless treasures I’ll ever have, and I can’t so much as insulate them in bubble wrap before sending them out into the world. They come back with bruise, cuts, and scrapes, but what really worries me are the wounds I can’t see. The times when my daughter curls her knees to her chest and whispers, “Mommy, I’m stupid.” The times when I know something is bothering my son and I can’t figure it out because I grew up in a house full of X chromosomes and don’t speak boy.

Lord, help me find the right words to comfort them, I pray. Help me find the words.

Words have always been there for me, but the right ones for parenting are not easy to find. How do I explain to my kids about their friend with a mommy and dozens of donor siblings? Or that some children have two mommies or two daddies, and that’s ok?

 The new “talk”

Having fielded a number of questions about how babies get out of their mothers’ stomachs, I was mentally prepping for the initial sex talk with my twins a few months ago. They’re six and in kindergarten, and honestly, I’m a believer in the free flow of information, the accurate naming of body parts, and that they should learn what they know from me, not from rumors and whisperings on the playground.

But then we got home from a lovely day and turned on the television. The tragic shootings at Sandy Hook happened that day, in a kindergarten class. I began to read news stories online, and as my kids ate dinner, I started to cry. There they were, safe at the dinner table, and several states away, children their age were dead.

“Mommy, why are you crying?”

I told them. Simply, yet truthfully. “I’m crying because a bad man went into a school today and did some horrible things. It was far away from here, but he went into a class full of kindergartners and shot them.”

What I couldn’t say is “I’m crying because now I’m going to have to tell you about things you shouldn’t have to know for years. You’re going to learn about lockdowns and places to hide and security procedures, and that’s not what I wanted for you. I wanted ABCs and library time and unlocked school doors and dodgeball. I don’t want you to know which tree is the place where you hide on the playground, and where all the closets are in the school.”

I wanted to wail and punch pillows. We weren’t even the victims, yet that night, my children’s innocence fell like scales from their eyes.

There is no being ready for this. No being ready for, months later, the random morning when your daughter calls from the bathroom, “Mommy? What do I do if a bad guy comes in while I’m in the bathroom?”

We still haven’t had “the talk.” I’m trying to talk them through bad guy scenarios when I don’t know if the answers I’m giving are even right in the first place.

So to my friends who ask, the real answer is this. You can never be ready to be a parent. You may be ready to have a baby, but it’s not the same thing. Not at all.

A need for a drink.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I am giving you the recipe for a drink of my own design. It’s potent, delicious, and pink.

I think I’ll call it the VD Special.

And yes, I know it’s good, because @BrittanyVandy was over here just last week and she sucked down two in record time and pronounced them delish.

You will need:

• Vodka
• Pomegranate juice
• Tonic water
• Citrus of your choice. I like lime or Meyer lemon

Step 1: Make sure you’re using high quality ingredients

All vodka is not created equal, people. You get what you pay for. This is my current favorite, Tito’s Handmate Vodka, out of Austin, Texas. Smooth, easy to drink, easy on the head. I’m also a big fan of Grey Goose and Level. Seriously, if you take any of my advice, let it be this: do not cheap out at the liquor store. You’ll thank me the next day.

Same advice for the next ingredient. I doubt it’s as easy to find the equivalent of Aristocrat vodka in the world of pomegranate juice, but I like mine organic, and 100% juice. It makes this drink a health food, y’all. Look, it’s right there on the label: super anti-oxidants!

Step 2: Add ice

Step 3: Add vodka

You know, just a splash.

Step 4: Add pomegranate juice

Add pomegranate juice to taste. Or to your color preference.

Step 5: Add citrus

Add a squeeze of citrus. Lime is delicious in this cocktail. It’s what I used in the drinks I made for @BrittanyVandy, in fact. Yet tonight I was tempted by the succulent Meyer lemon in my fridge, and so I gave it a whirl.

Y’all.

If you can get your paws on a Meyer lemon in February? You gotta try this.

Step 6: Stir

Some settling of the pomegranate juice is normal. Pomegranate was ombré before it was cool.

Step 7: Enjoy

YUM.

Gets better with every sip.