*mommy blog.

There seems to be an abundance of mommies around me lately, as my peers join the baby-making throngs, adding their genetic code to the world in terrific, nutty, miraculous combinations.

Not just any two people could make this, is all I'm saying.



I'm not sure if I'll ever be anyone's mommy. I'm in that sweet spot, somewhere after Bristol Palin but firmly before grieving my barren womb. Motherhood is a scenario that appeals to me, in a lot of ways, and terrifies me in a lot more of those same ways, and I have no doubt that if it winds up being not in my cards there will be parts of me that are befuddled and sad. But my particular happy delusion is that when one meets future-father-of-one's-children there is a spark of some sort, a nudge from the universe that says, "This one won't eat your young. Probably. We're 85% sure, and those are damn good odds these days."



There are some universal attributes to seek, I suppose, someone kind and either literally or metaphorically broad-shouldered. A touch ridiculous would help, in my case. Saner than I am, please, for the sake of these fictional offspring.

(If he's willing to referee diaper changes, LSis says, all the better.)



I'm not sure exactly how it works, making the sort of space in your heart that's required to have children, but it makes me a trifle awed by people who've done it. I edited photos of tiny people who don't even belong to me today and almost had to stop and catch my breath.



Particularly because, despite my screechingly loud pleading, they refuse to desist in becoming disturbingly less tiny these days.



Something enviable happens to the mommies I know when they become mommies, something similar but just a touch different from what happens when they get married—it's an almost imperceptible shift in center.



The automatic grounding of being tethered to another human, even as that human is throwing your life into a turmoil you couldn't have begun to fathom, predict, or prepare yourself for.



And they're better for it in the most fundamental of ways. Both more and less patient, more and less calm, less inclined to roll their eyes and more inclined to laugh.



These impossible moments are the ones they crouch in wait for, the blissful, sleepy ones that make them feel like they were made for making this person, for cherishing her and adoring her and teaching her things—primal, elemental things like what full feels like and what loved feels like and what cranky feels like and that HOLY CRAP SHE HAS LIMBS.



It can be startling.

So all my new mommies, remember: I'm watching you. I'm proud of you. I think you're all completely out of your minds. I'm being patient, and I'm taking notes.