Breakthrough on Ice

I slip on my green slippers with the pom poms and sneak into the kitchen to make the instant coffee.

It is a snow day. I am not full of joy for the day off. I wanted to go to work. This tells me that I am more off balance then I thought. 

A few hours later I am sledding down a hill in a blizzard with Marcel in my lap pausing from the crying long enough 

to holler in delight

and Sam holding onto the back of the sled

laughing his butt off.

We are there with a new friend and her daughter.

Soon we give in to the ice pellets on raw skin

and trudge back home to thaw with hot cocoa, 
popcorn and ugly decorated cookies.

My new friend admires my home, my children.
Her daughter looks like I did as a girl, with her square jaw
and wispy bangs. 
Girl energy in my house is balancing.
I realize I still long for that daughter too.

I remember the one I lost at thirteen weeks,
and the message on the machine identifying the tissue as female.
Her fantasy name: Dixie. Meryl Dixie Junior Girl Dale actually.

I like being reminded of her, and what it felt like to carry
all that girl knowing for that blip on the screen,
that then faded out.

If I wasn't a mom, I would have been in all day

longing for an opportunity to be outside sledding with 

a superhero like Sam, and a loop like Marcel.

I would have had no idea how easy it was to stay inside alone,

and write. 

Because to me then, that was a hard choice.