“Sometimes,” I admit to her, looking around to make sure no one can hear me, but we’re here alone except for The Kid and I guess it’s his ears I want to protect, “I hear him cry at night and the very last thing I want to do is get out of bed and feed him.”

Eyes meet mine in understanding and I’m not judged. She tells me a story from a mutual friend, who had an unexpected half-day off work and chose to spend it seeing a movie and going to happy hour with her husband rather than pick her son up early from day care and take him to the park. The second option being the one she felt she was supposed to do–or, more importantly, supposed to want to do. She ran into a neighbor and admitted her actual plan, the non-child-friendly one, then burst into guilty tears. The neighbor smiled and told her that taking care of herself and her marriage for an afternoon was closer to the right thing than she knew. The email conversation among friends that resulted from that story was filled with laughter, tears, and identification. None of us can be everything we want to be; forget everything we think others want us to be.

The Kid is definitely making up for a quiet first few weeks, and his wails grip my heart and send me alternately toward insanity and pity. The Sis told me what she learned in nursing school–that the infant’s cry is meant to be piercing, especially to a mother. It’s nothing short of biology, designed to alert her the only way the baby can. The trouble is discerning the type of cry, the one that must be attended vs. the one that will trail off on its own. But both pierce; both frustrate. Last night, TK cried for the first time when we put him to bed. I realize what a blessing it is that he usually goes down quietly, at least at night, but as The Husband and I listened from our room and waited for which cry it would be, my ears reacted as they would to fingernails on a chalkboard while my heart felt ripped down the middle. And I realized my twofold interpretation of the cry. It is equal parts blessing: lungs that function, sign of life; and curse: commentary on my inability to fix everything. I thanked God for the cry even as biologically-driven anxiety flooded my veins.

My soothing voice sounds fake to me. I remember the first time I heard The Sis whisper gently to The Niece and I marveled at her transformation, her softening; then we went downstairs and had a glass of wine and I realized she was the same person. Same, but different. When the Bro-in-Law offered to come over today and keep TK while I took an hour for myself, I said hell yes–the same thing I might say if, for instance, I was faced with an unexpected half-day off work and was offered a movie and happy hour. Doesn’t mean I love TK less, just means I’m once again juggling all that makes me who I am. Identity becomes trickier once you have kids, but mine won’t be tricky in the sense that I lose it in them. And somehow, that makes me able to love him more. Or maybe just better. As I put feet to pavement this morning and ran for the first time since my early pregnancy, I fell into a rhythm that initially took me further from home, further from my little buddy. I felt it coming back to me, the cadence of steps and the working of my body like it used to before TK, and I marveled at the transformation–and lack of it–since he’s come along. Somehow, in the past few months, I’ve stayed a runner even while absent from it–and become a mom, even when I’m absent from him. I turned my face to the sun, flipped the volume up, and traveled the path that would become a circle leading home.