The Moment You Understand Why You Had Kids

We yell. We get so frustrated. We roll our eyes and look heavenward and pray for an end to the chaos. (Whether we believe anyone occupies the heavens or not.) We pour a glass of wine and then another just to take the edge off the stress we feel plus the guilt we feel for having that stress. We question our decisions, lament our lack of control, worry acutely about how wrong we’re doing everything. We wonder why everyone else seems to have a handle on this parenting thing while we do not. We fantasize about being 22 again and unattached and roaring a Harley cross country (even though we’ve never actually ridden a motorcycle.)

And then a little person we helped CREATE — out of NOTHING — wakes up scared and crying and comes looking for us while we’re trying to catch up with the SNL premiere we had to DVR because we were too exhausted to watch it live, and crawls up onto the couch we were attempting to escape to, and falls asleep as soon as we say “It’s okay, sweetheart,”’ and as they lie there breathing calmly in sleep, with their worries defeated, completely vulnerable but able to switch off because of the whole-body trust they have in us to protect and love them, we think — stupidly, embarrassingly, honestly — I couldn’t care about anything in the universe more than I care about this little person.

Love is love and then you have kids and realize love is something you only partly understood.