Becoming Their Mother
People told me to call social services.
Some said I was too young. Some said Vanessa would come back in a week. Some said I was ruining my life.
Maybe they were right about one thing: my old life did end that night.
But when Lily curled her tiny fingers around mine, when Rose sneezed and startled herself, when Grace opened her eyes and stared at me as though she already knew me, I stopped thinking about what I had lost.
I only thought: They are here. They need someone.
So I became that someone.
I learned to feed one baby while rocking another with my foot. I learned that silence was suspicious, that sleep was a luxury, and that love could make a person stronger than fear.
There were nights I cried on the kitchen floor because the bills were stacked higher than the laundry. Mornings I went to work with baby cereal on my blouse and no memory of brushing my hair.
I sold my little car and bought an old van. I gave up the graduate program I’d been accepted into. I stopped dating, because no man seemed to understand that loving me meant loving three little girls who came first, always.
But I never regretted them.
Not once.
