For the first year, we were strictly co-parents. I changed diapers, I warmed bottles, I sat in the sterile waiting rooms of Monroe Children’s Hospital while Clara underwent the procedures needed to stabilize the damage the Whitmore clinic had done to her immune system.
I learned to tell Noah and Finn apart not by their clothes, but by the way Finn chewed his lower lip when he was thinking, and the way Noah laughed with his whole body.
Maren watched me. She watched me show up, day after day, without asking for applause, without demanding my place at the head of the table.
Last Sunday, we took the kids to the park near the old country road. The twins, now three, were chasing a golden retriever near the fence line. Clara, walking with a slight, stubborn limp that the doctors said she’d outgrow, was holding Maren’s hand.
