I have eight nieces and nephews, who are all remarkably unique.  Hannah just turned 17 (interesting because her mom and I are still 22 and 24…) and she is, like my sister, all-encompassing.  She is open, and magnetic and effortless in her success without being even a little annoying about it.  Caroline is, like her aunt Andrea, layered, complex, sharp as hell and incredibly funny.  She will most likely be the most successful of all, but she’ll keep it under wraps for awhile, because – you know, it’s none of your damn business.

Lex is earnest, generous and sweet like my brother, and his brother Jackson is courageous and an instigator and adorably shady, if that can be a thing, also like my brother.  Amelia is the baby, a princess in a pink tutu with a sweet toughness that only a girl with two older brothers can have.  She runs the house.

Trinity is 8, going on 28, with a confidence I really don’t think I’ve ever had.  She is scary smart and I fear/hope she will one day run the world.  Or destroy it, she probably hasn’t decided which.  Truman is the fastest kid I’ve ever seen (obviously a defense mechanism) who once sang every line of a Plain White T’s song in the back of my car and made me cry.  He also once told me in confidence that I’m the prettiest sister so he’s obviously very smart.  Sejen is two, headstrong and determined with a face like an angel, but seriously, she will cut you.  My sister says that she has a superpower and it rhymes with itchy.

I’ve been thinking so much lately about the baby that I lost, and what they would have been like, and what my life would have been, and how they would have fit in to my wonderful family.  I never, despite spending most of my thirties in an airplane with no normal relationships to speak of, thought I would not be a mom.  I always assumed it would happen, and I hope that it will someday, in some way probably not traditional.  In the aftermath of that horrible time and the pain I was going through, I very nearly fell apart.  At three this morning I woke up crying and sweating, remembering a hurtful and awful thing I screamed at him in the middle of all of this pain and I felt so sorry for all of us.  I forget, in all the anger, that it is really just hurt and pain we were both trying to get through.  I want to move on, I want to leave this suffocating burden behind, I want this to be my last post about my loss and the rest of this blog to be about the future, and I will sincerely try.  Thanks for hanging in.