There is a golden blur to the last five weeks. Nights and days bleed together. The state of our nation, world economies and so forth have become faraway concerns. Successes and failures are measured in the numbers of diapers changed, the volume and consistency of what is in them, ounces fed, and hours slept.

Not our hours, of course. John and I are still powered by the wild-eyed adrenaline designed to fuel new parents through these weeks, maybe months, in this Darwinian hurdle of human survival.

In the meantime, everything swirls around Eliza, now into her fifth week on earth. Eliza Jean Marie – an old family name on her father’s side and two middle names for both grandmothers. As I rock her I’m enjoying that it can all roll off the tongue sounding very French or very redneck. I wonder about the places in the world she will end up; what landscapes or cities she will make a home in.

Eliza is exquisite, of course. Just like her sister, she will worm her swaddled body up my chest and upper left arm and shoulder, until she and I are eyeball to eyeball, her head bobbing as she meets my gaze unblinkingly and this curious look of comprehension like oh, you’re the voice in my head comes over her face. Get used to it, kid, I want to tell her. I’m your mother, and I will probably be the voice in your head forever.

The successes all belong to Eliza. We own the failures, which are spectacular and jarring reminders that life with two kids is very different than life with one. At three weeks we decided to take Eliza and Jessie, now 21 months and a full-blown joyous, wilful toddler, on a ski trip to Idaho. Empowered by a blissful family lunch in Wallace – where I slowly drank a cold beer out of a mason jar, as Eliza slept peacefully in my arms and Jessie happily ate pesto bread with her dad as the sun shined down through the big windows on all of us – we decided to make a stop a local brewery down the road before heading to our hotel. 

It took us about 15 minutes to unload, do a round of diaper changes on the passenger seat, organize ourselves with strollers, front carriers, backpacks, diaper bags, and make our way up the street to the front door of the brewery, where we lasted less than five minutes inside. As soon as we had seated ourselves, Jessie dissolved, Eliza started screaming, and John looked over at me then up at our waitress – “let’s just get a growler to go.”

Back at the truck, the girls, still in tears, tucked into their car seats, John folded up the stroller and loaded it into the back. I stood there, hands in jacket pockets, watching a teenager on a bike ride past, looking at us like our life in motion was his worst nightmare. 

This scene would also have been my nightmare when I was a teenager, I think, sympathetically. Quite honestly, it would have been my nightmare when I was 33. 

And yet 10 years later, a “geriatric” mom on all the medical charts with decades of noon sleep-ins, brewery stops, and easy, lonesome roadtrips behind me, I’m surprised at how comfortable it feels, this chaos.

“Lets get these girls home,” John says, and I still have to remind myself that these girls are our girls. Maybe it’s because of this golden blur time, but I still have to pinch myself as a reminder that I’m not dreaming.