Where two begin?

Two is here.
Marcel navigated the journey with grace.
In that graceless way only a two year old can.

He insisted that he was five all day.
He ate donuts.
His nose the river ran faster than we could.
He loved his new Lego firetruck.
He didn't share.
He screamed a lot.
He jumps from the furniture.
His head.

In between the morning gathering with one little friend
and several big ones,
and the evening gathering with family extended
I made it to the ER for a kidney stone or two.
There I was in the same hospital where I delivered Marcel
two years before.
For a much shorter stay with much less to show for it when I left.
(Drink lots of fluid, takes lot of Advil. Wait.)
The free socks were old lady beige this time.
Pink when you are a new mom.
White after a miscarriage.

Home alone today
in a droopy silence.
Exhausted from the pain,
and the joy
and the eventuality
of the unspoken.

When Sam turned two my body was a lean plank,
my hair long,
my heart so full-at least that's what I see in the video
we all watched together the other day
to remind the big brother
how he was when he was two too-
and how much more he can do
now at nearly five.

Growing up is hard you know.
Especially when your little brother fits in to your spider man rain boots from the bag downstairs
the boots you didn't even know you ever had,
which makes it even harder to let someone else have them now.
Someone who has already opened one present today.
Enough already.

I look at that radiant woman
only two years into motherhood.
And I see someone so able,
beautiful and willing.

A woman who seems oddly foreign to me now.
Transformed by a pregnancy
and the loss of 4000 hours of sleep-
over five years.

She is the woman in the cubicle next to me
who I listen to all day, but we somehow never managed to connect.

No, she's right here,
underneath the kidney pain,
and the grief of letting go of the baby for the big boy now.
She's on the pages of the Hip Mama magazine
arriving today in the mail.
She's in between the pages of the new vegetarian cookbook
and on the underside of the magenta petals of the farm picked flowers Louise gave me last night
to celebrate me in the middle
of Marcel making it to two with so much graceless ease.