It was about this time of night 8 years ago... I was still working on my endless to do list and had an appt to check into the maternity ward at the hospital at 5:30am the next morning. I kept thinking about how my midwife told me over and over to get a good night's sleep because the next day could be a long one. We were inducing the twins because they were overdue and didn't seem to have any plans to come on their own. I wasn't dilating - at all. But I had this list, all these unfinished things, and I still had my Type A personality with no other babies yet to care for that kept driving me to finish every last thing I could.  I also had this total fatigue with which to contend, but I was squeezing every last drop of the adrenaline I was feeling over the impending, all-consuming life change that was hours away from me. To do justice to the feelings and the worries I had about going to the hospital with the babies in my belly and leaving with those babies in my arms... it's just next to impossible to describe. I was excited, yes, so excited. I was terrified, yes, to my core. Could I do this? Could I give everything that my babies needed? How? Two of them? At the same time? Could I function on months of no sleep? Would I get the hang of nursing them both at the same time? What if one or both had colic? What if I never got them on the same sleep schedule? What if they were always miserable because I wasn't doing a good enough job? What if they cried all the time because I wasn't capable? What if I inadvertently gave one more attention than the other?


Rewind to a couple months prior... discussing birth plans with my midwife. She's telling me about the risks of trying to deliver twins naturally but leaves it to me to decide whether I wanted to try or just schedule a c-section. I'm being respectful and letting her finish, but I'm having none of it. I waited 35 years to have these babies, and I was having them naturally. Somehow it would work out. I didn't even have a real reason why I was so set on this, but I just set out from day 1 of my pregnancy after a successful IVF attempt to try to do everything as naturally as possible. I was still having to do daily injections to ensure my body would maintain the pregnancy, and there was no way I would mess with that. But I had so many worries after years of infertility and after being labeled high risk by my obgyn that I would miscarry these babies that we wanted so badly that I just went straight and narrow, not knowing how else to deal with my fears. I stopped consuming caffeine, I refused things that had anything artificial in them, I would not have taken any medication if not for my inability to function without Zofran... man, I was so sick. And when it came time to discuss the birth plan, I knew my babies were both head down, and there was really no need to discuss any other means of delivering them. My midwife told me we would continue to watch them and their movements and she would support this birth plan as long as all continued to look good.


Long story short... just kidding, it's still long..., I checked into the hospital the day we were scheduled for induction, because, for being a high-risk, advanced-maternal-aged mother-to-be of twins, my biggest fear of the boys coming too early ended up being the last thing I needed to worry about.  Here I was past my due date, as wide as I was tall (or at least it felt like it), I hadn't seen the bones in my face, legs, or feet for months, and I hadn't had so much as a contraction, so much as a centimeter of dilation, nothing. So they started the Pitocin. And 14 hours later, after hours and hours of contractions, after the midwife finally broke my water, I was finally starting to dilate. Push time was coming.


Since I hadn't had any experience giving birth before, I didn't realize then that everything I was about to endure giving birth to the twins was not the norm. It was a good thing for me to think that it was all par for the course, because had I had an easier delivery as I did a year and a half later with Adrian, I might have wanted to just wave my white flag and give up. But I hung in there, pushing over and over, nearly delivering Javi so many times only for him to go right back in with all progress lost. And then Dominic's heart rate started getting concerning, and at that point, my midwife looked at me and started explaining what was happening and I knew by her eyes and tone of voice that my birth plan was no longer the plan. And I didn't argue. I just wanted my babies out safely. And then the needle in my spine was migrating. And then I had to have a spinal tap. And then I felt I was suffocating to death because the spinal was so high. And then I was hemorrhaging. But the boys were born and were perfect. I was so grateful.


Fast forward to the morning after the boys were finally born just after 10pm, and you'd see what I see when I cringe looking at pics of me from that day... with a broken vein in one eye and broken blood vessels all over my face, the ringing and echoing in my head caused by the blood loss giving me a loopy expression, my messy hair still matted from when I vomited all over the place... I was a mess.  But these boys, my excitement, my fear, my feelings of ineptness, my obsessive need to do right by them, to do the best for them, to love them and give them everything they needed if it killed me... they made everything else go by the wayside. I didn't care how I looked or felt. I didn't care if I slept or ate. I just needed to know every second that they were ok. I marveled at seeing Jose Rendon with them. Veronica was already 9 when I'd met her. I hadn't seen him be a father to a newborn before. My heart was so full I was sure it would burst. 


And honestly, not much has changed since then. Gradually I was able to get myself together again as moms all try to do... some do it better than others. Most seem to do it better - or at least more quickly - than me. But I still have the distraction of needing my kids to be ok more than I have the need to be pretty or well rested or well fed. On the other hand, I feel like I'm staring at the next challenge more and more closely in the face with each year that passes... it's that need they'll have for me to start letting go of the reins some. To let them make more decisions (and more mistakes), to let them be more independent (but be close by when they fall), to let them stretch (without telling them *how*). And I tell myself I have to face these years with patience and grace, the former not a strength of mine despite all my desires and efforts. But I have to dig deep and find those qualities in me anyway, because 8 years have already passed. And in just 10 more, they'll be high school seniors. It'll be a blink to me, but it'll be their entire childhood memories, and it'll be their foundation for adulthood, the basis for nostalgic experiences later. So as I do every night before their birthday, I resolve to be the best mom I can be this next year... may I make fewer mistakes, be more patient, keep the good things, show all the love and grace I can, teach them to love and show grace back, continue to learn from them, as they teach me every day also. And I still worry whether or not I am enough, whether I'm capable, whether I'm leaving them with unfulfilled needs. But these last 8 years have shown me that, while I'm not perfect and I fall short every day, I am capable of giving them what they need... it's the figuring out what they each need as individuals that's the toughest. I hope to look back on these years one day and see that I met the challenge well and that, at a minimum, they know and feel how fiercely they've been loved. Happy 8th Birthday to my first born boys who turned an already over-thinker into this thing I am today. I'm so lucky to be their mommy.

There have been profound moments in my life where I have learned something I didn’t previously know that made me realize just how much I didn’t know… about this world, about life experiences beyond my comprehension, and about the sort of weight that some people carry silently. And just because there are people walking around that don’t know something of that experience doesn’t make the weight any less heavy, any less painful, any less life altering for the individual who doesn’t have the benefit of not knowing. 

Tonight I watched First They Killed My Father; it came up in the suggestions on my Netflix account.  Now I should preface that despite my love of history and my decent knowledge of the Vietnam War, I’m the first to admit that I’m no expert on the why’s, hows’s, and when’s of certain historical events of war. Jose knows so much about… well, so much, that I find myself often wondering how he fits so much information in his noggin.  We regularly have conversations where I’ll bring something up, and then he responds with details and a story and timeline… it’s baffling. 

So, anyway, almost 12 years ago now, Jose and I were recruited to this company in San Diego and made the move from Denver in January 2006. One of the friends we met out there was originally from Cambodia. He worked in Accounting with Jose, and he sort of had this mystery about him. There was an openness about him and yet a deep privateness about him. I’m not one to ask questions of people even when I’m dying to know their story, because I never want to intrude; you just never know how someone’s pain is triggered. I knew his age, I knew where he was from, and I knew he wasn’t there anymore. But there came a day that has stuck with Jose and I both. It was when this friend commented that he hated Nixon because Nixon bombed his village. It was the first personal thing he had ever said to us. From there, we learned that this friend lost loved ones and neighbors, and he came to the US as a little boy of 8 years old… a refugee. I felt after that conversation that I knew enough about him to know what his story probably was. It wasn’t until tonight that I saw his story play out on my laptop screen through the eyes of a child… the main character of this film… that I realized how shallow my “insight” had been. I realized that I had thought of his memories as playing out through an adult’s mind, which is a terrible thing to be sure, but this friend sees those events through the eyes of a little boy…a little boy the same age as my little boys. And that’s just… there aren’t words for that.

If I could see this friend again, I might not say a word. I might just walk up to him and hug him as hard as I can for as long as he’d let me. I actually hate that I didn’t realize the obvious when he told the story. I’m not sure how I reacted when he told it. Did I say I’m sorry? How small do those words seem to me now that I’m thinking about this through a different set of lenses? But what can you say about something so atrocious that should never ever happen to anybody? I mean we are all human beings, and it’s difficult to fathom how there can be one person this evil, let alone so many that the ultimate domino effect can occur, causing people who might never have become monsters… to become monsters. And these sufferings were not isolated to the Cambodians who were a neutral country and bombed anyway with children torn from their parents, spouses torn from each other. They are happening today in other countries; we have seen footage on our own tv screens. Most of us have seen that precious boy who was pulled from the Aleppo carnage and sat in an ambulance covered in blood, soot, and dust. There are thousands like him. And what must it be like for each of them now and in the future? Where do they go to survive? What additional atrocities happen to them as they try to escape and survive? How do these babies grow up and live with these memories?

I hope everyone will watch First They Killed My Father. It’s a film based on the book written by the little girl when she’s grown. She represents to me someone who my friend in San Diego can identify with… someone who is telling a story that everyone should see and do everything possible to not allow to repeat. It’s too easy with distance to think that some people are just expendable if your definition of the greater good allows for it. And then you see something like this, and, I have to tell you, none of the people in this film seemed expendable to me. See what you think. Watch this film.
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#firsttheykilledmyfather #cambodiabombings #vietnamwar #loungung
www.loungung.com/

I hear the call that tells me all I need to know just by the mere tone and cadence of my name: "Mooooooom-Meeeeeee!" It's Adrian, and he's in the bathroom, seemingly finished doing his business. I know he is calling for my assistance, as I am still 8 months away from having only one remaining kid's butt to wipe, given our long standing, child-instituted rule that the parental duty is required until the age of 7.

I'm actually reading something at the kitchen counter, so I let him call me a couple more times in order to finish the article and also because Adrian tends to not always be finished when he calls me, causing me to waste a trip about half the time. He calls me again and elaborates a little more each time: "Mooooom - Meeeeeee! I'm done!" Pause. "Well, I'm not really done, but I'm kind of done." Pause. "Well, I'm done for now. I'm going to save the rest for later." Pause. "So can you please come here now?"

I head to the bathroom, his line about "I'm going to save the rest for later" still rolling around in my head. That's a new one, I think.

I get in there, and I notice that there's just a tiny bit in the toilet, so I ask him why so little to which he responds that he needed to flush earlier because the toilet was filling up. What is he, I think, a horse? It was a double-flusher, and he's still holding onto some for later? 

Later, Jose and I are really hungry for fajitas, but neither of us has the ambition to cook tonight, so we decide to take the boys and go grab some dinner somewhere. As per usual, about midway through the meal, Adrian announces he has to poop and asks me to take him - there's "the rest" he was saving for later, I suppose. He tells me, "It's going to be a while, Mommy." I stand outside the stall and wait with another mom whose child is also taking a mid-dinner crap, and it feels a little like how the dads who stand nearby holding shopping bags while their wives are in the changing room must feel, except that no one will be calling them in momentarily to do something below their pay grade like with the moms.  

After what feels like ages since we got to the restroom, Adrian finally calls out that familiar jingle, "Mooooom-Meeeee! I'm dooooonnnne!" Afterwards, he tells me with amazement in his voice that when I have to come in there with Daddy instead of him, it must be a really tight fit. I assure him that Daddy wipes his own butt, so we haven't had that problem. 

We walk out and other moms with kids in hand have accumulated, waiting for their turn, grinning. While we wash our hands, Adrian tells me very matter of factly, "Mommy, I like it better when you take me to the bathroom instead of Daddy. I don't like going in the girls bathroom, but you wipe my butt better. Daddy does it too hard. I like how you're gentle." He tips his head down and purses his lips to make his point. As we walk past the other moms on our way out the door, I could swear we all make a realization together in that very moment: We have all been doing TOO GOOD of a job. Maybe if we weren't such awesome butt wipers, we'd be eating our dinners while the Dads stood in the bathroom making small talk with a youngin' in an enclosed, not-well-ventilated space, asking him between grunts and groans if he's almost finished as they picture their dinners on the table where they left them. Hours later, I still feel a kinship with those ladies and am wondering if they're thinking the same as I:  Must work on this. :)~

#Comewipemybutt #buttwipingchronicles #Mommysdoitbetter #Awinforthedads

“Remember that time you got soap in your eyes, and you couldn’t stop crying, Mommy?” Javier asks me from time to time. “Yeah, Mommy, that’s why you can never get that kind of soap in your face, because when it gets into your eyes, it hurts SO bad that even mommies cry,” adds Dominic.

You would have turned 26 years old today. I think about you all the time. I see pictures and posts from your friends, and I see how they’re growing up, faces gradually aging in all the best ways… losing the rest of their childlike features and gaining the fine lines that come with growth, knowledge, wisdom, experience, and years gone by. Even though you feel awfully grown up when you’re 19, 20, 21… later, when you’re in your 40’s, you look back and think, “we were still just babies!” You really had the whole world in front of you, overflowing with endless possibilities. I remember so well the conflicting feelings I had about loving everything about you, your happy energy, your determination, your dreams… your boundless potential. And those things were also the reason we would only have you with us temporarily - because college and a career and marriage and family were calling for you… all in due time, though. 
The first day you got here, I was both thrilled that you were so wonderful and sad that one day you would leave us. A new mom’s biggest, most all-consuming worries lie with entrusting the wellbeing of her babies with someone else.  I had always imagined myself as a stay-at-home mom. Jose and I had even talked from early on that I planned to stay home those first years. When circumstances were such that it wasn’t a possibility, it felt utterly impossible to me to leave them with anyone. And yet we did. And I eventually realized that there were others out there who could love your kids well enough to give you peace of mind even if your first choice would be to be there yourself. We had someone help us care for the twins in our home when I returned to work, and when Adrian arrived, we had another gal for a few months until we could decide on the au pair option. We cared and still care for both of those ladies; they forever left their imprints here, and the gratitude we feel for the love they showed our baby boys is infinite. But… it was time for change. And we decided to go ahead and take that leap…
I remember like it just happened… the first moment I saw your face on Skype. Your nephew, Paulo, was little and in and out of view of the camera, and I could see right away that you loved him and he you. I had read everything you’d written about the reason you wanted to be an au pair, the kind of person you saw yourself as being, and the kind of family you were hoping to find. Before I actually talked to you face to face, I knew that everything about your profile was a winner to me. But we had read a lot of profiles and interviewed a lot of potential au pairs on Skype only to realize that, beyond the printed words on the screen, the appeal was lost. People can write about wonderful characters, and maybe they see themselves in that way or maybe it’s who they want to be. In you, we found someone who knew herself and had described the very person I sat across from behind my keyboard. How refreshing was that… and with it, I felt an instant trust in you that you were genuine and loving and could be the perfect match for our family. But would you love us back? Were we what YOU were looking for? I hoped so. I wanted us to make you happy too.
You arrived at DFW, and I picked you up holding a sign so you’d know it was me. Sometimes people look different in person than behind a laptop screen, but neither of us had a problem finding each other. On the way home, we talked about your flight, your favorite things, music - I told you we didn’t play a lot of your beloved Banda in our house… lol. I loved your nervous laugh, the deep dimples in your cheeks, and I was fascinated by your golden-flecked eyes. You were warm and open. You were 19 years old, you would be turning 20 years old soon, and you were going to be taking care of my twin boys who were not even 2 years old yet and my 4 month old boy. That’s a lot even for parents to manage. I wondered if such a young person could handle all the responsibilities. But you did, and you did it brilliantly. The boys were happy, they were always making creative things, playing fun games, learning new songs, and posing for lots and lots of pictures. And if all that wasn’t enough, you helped bring an order to our lives that we otherwise couldn’t seem to maintain on our own once the boys had come along. And anyone who knows me pre-baby knows that I am a Type A, everything has its place, everything needs to be in order, sort of person. Post-baby, I could only dream of keeping up. I’d come home to an empty sink, clean counter tops, clean, happy babies, an organized craft drawer and book shelves, and lots of love and laughter in the air. Sometimes, even now, I’ll be sitting in my office at the front of the house, and I almost think I can still hear your loud, loving, jovial voice saying, “Que guapooooooo!” while one of the boys shows you their latest costume creation. 
You missed your mom. So much. There were times in the beginning when you used up all of your smiles and laughter around us and then retreated to your room to allow yourself time to feel your sadness over your homesick heart. You talked to your mom, niece, nephew, friends, etc. on Skype, and I tried to remember to hug you often to give you some of the maternal attention I knew you missed. You spoke often of your mom, your sisters, your dad and your best friend CuCu… I often waved at them while preparing dinner while you guys chatted away in the kitchen via your laptop. It was truly a wonderful time for us. There was happiness, and harmony; you calmed the parts of me that were prone to overwhelmedness with a full time job, 3 little boys, and a home to take care of. You and Jose talked about your favorite recipes, and you both liked to impress the other with your homemade Mexican dishes. You were close in age to Veronica and to our boys’ nurse (“Roop” to them,Ruth to you), and I loved seeing you develop relationships that would give you roots here and fill some of the gap between what you missed back home in Hermosillo and the new journey you had chosen for yourself here. Not everything was perfect for you, but you had the most positive outlook and the most open heart, and those things carried you through your first Christmas away from your family and the sadness you felt not being able to hug and play with your niece and nephew every day.
I loved the pictures and text messages you would send me throughout the day, every day. I felt like I was there even though I wasn’t, and you seemed to just know that if I was missing something in person that I should see it anyway. I loved you for it. I loved you more and more each day. You were never just an au pair to our family. You were family. You had a real mom and dad and sisters that you belonged to. But you were also mine in some way that I still can’t articulate. 
You were taken away 4 years and 2 months ago by the person who was suppose to love you, the person you met when you were here in Dallas, the person who had spent many hours in my house with you and our family during holidays, dinners, and game nights, the person we were all embracing because YOU loved him… and my heart shattered into a million pieces. I remember the phone call, but the memory of the words I heard are a jumbled, hazy, mess. I was confused, and then I was sobbing on my knees. I remember trying to breathe and stifle my cries because Jose was in the bathroom helping the older 3 brush their teeth, while I had just gotten 1 month old Santiago to sleep in my arms. I felt and thought so many things all at once, that it’s difficult to even sort them out and write about them here. I found myself immediately trying to trace back to the last time we had spoken, emailed or texted each other, and I realized at some point to my horror that in the month after Santi’s birth, we had just exchanged comments on Facebook a few times under a picture of the boys. Guilt over that nearly drowned me for the first couple years, and even now it is my biggest regret. Time moves so quickly, and, even though we know we must always reach out to those we love and stay close, sometimes things happen that swoop us up into the fray and we lose track of time. You had just died a horrible death, and, while I couldn’t stop my mind from thinking of the distress you must have felt going through that alone with no one to help you, I also couldn’t believe that I had not recently phone you to say I love you. With time, I know you weren’t thinking of that and you know you were loved. But I still wish we could have had one really long conversation before you left this earth and that it might have occurred to me to tell you everything I would tell you if I could see you one more time today.
As often as I think of you, I think of your mom, your dad, your sisters, your niece and nephew, your many, many friends… The ones who had you for many years longer than we did. How engulfing must this loss have been on them? As much as it continues to pull at my heart, how many millions more times is that weight for them? I remember in the days, weeks, and months after your life was taken I just would not have the will to even get out of the car when I’d arrive to my parking spot. And I would just sit there and cry all over again. I would walk up and down the aisles of a store, feeling empty and in a fog with the heaviest weight on my chest and shoulders. How did your loved ones even cope? We were so far away… in separate countries. It seemed so unfair to not be able to go to your mother and hug her… to tell her in person how much we love you, what a wonderful person she raised, and to try to do… something… anything… to ease her pain if only for a moment. Every second I ached… I couldn’t imagine how everyone else who loved you could possibly be feeling. I finally reached a point where every time I started to feel that searing pain, I would tell myself that you were fine; you were in Hermosillo with your family, you were in college, etc. I felt guilty again thinking that we were fortunate to be able to pretend that you were just back at home with your family. Your family didn’t have that luxury. They had to miss your presence every second, minute, day, week, month, and year.
In those first few months, I would have dreams about you, that you were here again. Jose had them too. We talked about them. It felt like you were trying to provide comfort to us, and, even if the reality is that it was only our minds trying to protect us, I still don’t mind feeling like it was really you caring for us. I remember going to sleep stifling sobs, and I would be so desperate to see you in my dreams again. Over the years, I’ve seen you less and less in my dreams, but I still hope for it to happen again and again. I tell myself, you’re doing fine. You’re living your life. You’re 26 years old. You’re an official grown up now. But I know the truth. I don’t see you in my IG feed or my FB feed. I don’t get text messages from you. You are eternally 21 years old in pictures. I will have to imagine you at 30, 40, 50, and beyond. I will have to imagine you with your own children; I know the amazing kind of mother you’d be.
I always swore that our boys would know who you were growing up. That, even though they were so young when you passed, and they would not be able to hang onto memories of their time with you, they would see you in frames on our wall, and they would still see the things you made for them and for us, and they would always know who Priscilla is. To this day, they do not know that you aren’t alive, that you’re not just back home in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico living your life. I could not look at my twin 3 1/2 and 2 year old boys and find words to explain something like that. So when they saw me falling apart despite my best effort to show some semblance of composure, I told them I got soap in my eyes. They wanted to know more, so I showed them the soap near the sink of our bar upstairs, and I showed them how, when you press the foam out, bubbles fly into the air, and those bubbles got into my eyes. And they burned worse than any burn I’d ever felt. The boys have never used that soap; I suppose they don’t want to suffer the same fate lest some floating bubbles fly into their own eyes.
On this, what would be your 26th birthday, I just want to say again that we loved you then, we love you now, and we will love you forever. I got soap in my eyes again, so I’m going to picture you at a party with your favorite Banda in the background. You’re surrounded by friends and family, and you’re posing for pictures. And later on, you’re going to text me a story about something funny that happened, and I’m going to picture you laughing with your deep dimples in your cheeks, and your noise crinkled at the top.  And I’ll tell you, I love you, and I’m so proud of you. You’ve grown into such a amazing woman, and I’m so happy I get to be a part of your life.