Once upon a time, I was an athlete. I hate that I’m using the past tense here, but alas, it seems appropriate. I have not played sports in years and years.

Growing up, athletics were my life. That might be a bit of an overstatement because I of course had many other things going on in my life – academics and music and family and friends. But sports were my passion. When I was really young, I logged hours in the driveway of our barn in the Berkshires shooting hoops solo. I played endless games of Wiffle ball and soccer with my sisters. For many years, whenever I had a birthday party, it was a sports party and I’d force my poor friends to play a game of basketball or kickball or soccer before cake.

In middle school and high school, I played on the soccer and basketball and softball teams. I was captain of each. I was a fierce and competitive creature and game days were my favorite days by far. I often ate dinner in a sweaty and soiled softball uniform, my pants dusty from sliding in to so many bases. I remember senior year when I had a bad stress fracture in my shin. I stood on the sideline of the big soccer field, holding my cane, begging my coach to go in. And when my coach relented, I tossed that cane into the grass and ran out there, limping, eager to score. And I did.

I could go on and on; my athletic memories are rich and plentiful in my mind. But I won’t. This isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s about identity. Over the years, an enormous part of my self has somehow – and perhaps predictably – faded. I now walk down my street, past the basketball nets at the school on the corner (one is pictured above), and something little in me stirs. Something at once comforting and cryptic. Something about memory and childhood and loss. I realize – I let myself realize – in these moments that I miss my game days.

These days, I take my little girls to soccer class. An adult, a mom, I sit in the bleachers and watch them do what I once did. I watch as they skip around, kicking balls, smiling. I feel proud, yes. And excited for them. And, if I’m being honest, I also feel a bit envious that they are so young and free. That they have them all before them – if they want. The game days. (And so much else.)

Recently, I’ve been going back to the gym. Sure, some of it (or more than some of it) is about vanity and post-baby weight loss. But I have realized something, too. When I am there, working hard and sweating, I feel really good. I feel strong. I feel young. I feel alive. I feel like I am honoring a little (or not-so-little) part of who I’ve always been. I feel like me.

(Maybe I’m still an athlete after all?)

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Do you consider yourself an athlete? Did you play sports growing up? Do you miss aspects of your youth?

Don’t worry. I’m not losing my mind. (Well, maybe a little.)

I’m losing pounds. That’s the plan at least.

As of yesterday, I am six weeks out from welcoming our tiniest girl (a tiny girl who still needs to be given a proper blog name!). And I’ve lost more than 2/3 of the weight I gained over the course of my pregnancy. And I know that is pretty good, right? Maybe even better than pretty good? Then why am I so obsessed with dropping the final pounds? Why can’t I just relax and say, Ah, they will come off in time. It took nine months to gain the weight and I should give myself nine months (or at least three!) to lose it?

I don’t know. I don’t know why I am not embracing the laissez faire approach to postpartum weight loss. Probably because I don’t really take this approach to anything in life. Probably because I have a pattern of being exceedingly hard on myself and a major control freak. Probably because I am wildly wrapped up in appearances, and affirmation. It’s probably all of these things. There’s likely more to it, too.

Here’s the weird thing. For the first 27 years of my life, I never weighed myself. Even when I was in nutsy pre-wedding mode, I never stepped on a scale. Never. It was not until I learned that I was pregnant with Toddler (again, she needs a new blog name!) that I got into the habit of weighing myself every day. I think I was fearful that I would gain a million pounds and didn’t want that to happen, so I made sure it didn’t. Like this pregnancy, with each of my first two pregnancies, I gained within the recommended range. And then? I shed the pounds pretty quickly because parenthood is really the best cardio exercise ever and also because I was a bit crazy like I am being now.

So. Here I am. In a familiar spot. Heavier than I want to be. Thinking a bit too much about the extra pounds I’m carrying around, that frankly I should be carrying around a mere six weeks after the fact.

And so. Instead of whining about them, those pesky pounds – in addition to whining about them – I’m doing something about them.

As of this week, I’m eating differently. I refuse to use the D word, to even write it here, because I do not believe in the word and (much more importantly) I do not want my girls to know that word. So. Instead I speak very vaguely of wellness and health around them, but here I can be a bit more specific. For the next little bit of time, I am having healthy (and very small. wah.) prepared meals delivered to me. The program is actually specifically for nursing moms so I will be getting adequate calories and nutrition to nourish the wee one. (I do not want to publish the name of the program here until I know whether or not I like it.)

You know what? Writing this post, just writing it, feels a bit eh. I feel a bit embarrassed and ashamed that I am writing about something that is admittedly so much more superficial than other things I could write about – my sweet smiling girls, the arrival of spring, the new characters I’m putting to the page. And so I worry a bit – that if writing this post makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, reading it might have an equally eh effect on you. And it might. I’ll take that risk.

This post? It’s silly. It’s superficial. It’s shallow. But it’s also honest. Maybe too honest. But it’s where I am. And where I am is home and happy and harried, surrounded by impossible love and brilliant life and yummy little ones. But where I am is also in this head, and this body, this different and amazing body I know I should perhaps honor a bit more than I do. For what it has done and what it is doing. For what it has been through.

For what it has brought us.

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• Do you think it’s crazy or understandable that I am so intent on getting my body back so fast?
• Do you think my approach to postpartum weight loss is just an extension of my perfectionist approach to self and life?
  
• Do you think I am a victim somehow of cruel societal expectations of women, of mothers?
  
• Are you careful about what you say about body and weight around your children?
  
• When it comes to your body and your own appearance, are you forgiving or exacting?
  
• Speaking of forgiveness, will you forgive me for this decidedly non-profound (and potentially annoying) post?

Once upon a time, there were three Rowley girls. A mother and two little ones. Then, one day in the month of March in the year of 2011, another Rowley girl arrived. And when she did, with her in the world, the view changed.

Of course it did.

And so. These two little girls, the originals, were suddenly big sisters. Big sisters together. A team. And they had an idea. A brilliant one. They would do an art project. Not just any old art project though. They would decorate birthday hats. They would go all out with magic markers and stickers and glitter glue. And when they were finished, and their hats were dry, they popped them atop their heads. They pulled on their tutus – over their matching heart PJs – and they danced around. They celebrated.

And she? The littlest Rowley girl? The birthday babe? She was witness to it all, snug somewhere between utter oblivion and complete awareness, flitting between wakefulness and slumber, bright eyes and big yawns. She? The littlest Rowley girl? A lucky thing. To be here. To be welcomed, and wrapped up, so wonderfully.

And the biggest Rowley girl? That little yawn says it all. The mother is tired. But she is so happy. She has been a bit more serious in her recent musings. She knows this. But, really, that’s just because she find grays to be more interesting than rainbows and that’s what she tends to write about given the choice.

But today? On this Friday, two and a half weeks after a very big day in their lives, the mother, the biggest Rowley girl, is intent on recording the rainbows. For she is surrounded by little girls, glorious little girls. And they are hers. And she is theirs. Together, they wade through another morning, all of them still in pajamas, all of them snug in this good moment, somewhere between utter oblivion and complete awareness, bright eyes and big yawns.

Today. Today this biggest Rowley girl, this mother, is thankful, impossibly thankful, for this, for her real life.

Today. Today this biggest Rowley girl, this mother, is thankful, impossibly thankful, to be among them, to be one of the Rowley girls.

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As a person or a parent, are you more interested in exploring the grays or the rainbows of life? Do you think it is important that we do both? Are you ever just bowled over by the majesty of the everyday? Do you ever just look around – at the clutter, at the chaos, at the creatures in your midst – and realize how profoundly lucky you are?

“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”

William Shakespeare

As some of you know, Tuesday was Dad’s birthday. He would have been sixty-nine. And on that day, I posted a rather somber piece about how much I miss him, particularly at this time of year, particularly in this immediate wake of my third daughter’s birth.

I want you to understand something. I debated whether to post those words. I did not debate whether to write them; I needed to write them. But I did question whether I wanted to make them public. I face this dilemma every time before I publish something private, something more vulnerable. Ultimately, I decided to go for it, to send my sober words into the ether. I knew that it would be hard for some to read, particularly for those who have weathered a similar loss. I knew that it was not one of my “fun” posts. I knew these things, but I went ahead anyway.

I’m glad I did.

I’m glad I did because after I wrote those words, and after I published them here, I immediately felt lighter. Better. Like I had acknowledged something. Something hard. Something true. Something important. This was yet another confirmation for me that writing is in so many ways my own breed of therapy, that through words – read, thought, written – I am able to feel and heal.

But I learned something else. That something? That written words are not necessarily sufficient when it comes to grief.

On Tuesday, on Dad’s birthday, Mom and I went to lunch. It was just the two of us as the rest of my sisters were out of town. We met at one of our favorite local spots. A health food joint. I had the shrimp burrito and Mom had the veggie burger. We toasted Dad with a delicious midday glass of rose wine. The lunch started out as most of our lunches normally do – with chit chat, dips into current events and the news. But soon we were talking about Dad. About who he was before and after the cancer took hold, about what we remembered. We talked about his (oft-conflicting) identities as husband, father, and philosopher. Together, we marveled and mourned at the fact that we have been without him for going on three years.

Amazingly (or maybe not so?) it was a pretty happy lunch. One full of subtle celebration and keen memories. Looking back, I can envision us there: Mom and daughter at a tiny table for two. Eating lunch. Loving and longing and laughing. Grieving gracefully.

Giving sorrow words.

I realized then, and do now, that it is critical to revere our grief alongside those with whom we share it. That it is critical that we get out there in the world, that we lock eyes with other people, that we prop up those we love and let those we love prop us up, that we realize that it is not necessary to feel these things, these impossible and instructive things, alone.

And so. On the day I was aching for the parent I’ve lost, the parent I still have and love deeply stepped in. And she sat there, across from me, and I across from her. And we talked. We remembered. We laughed. We ate. We drank. We lived.

And so. On this day, a different day, I feel compelled to say thank you. To all of you, for reading my words even when their edges are rough and raw and real. Even when they are not sparkly bits blanched with sunshine.

I also feel compelled to say thank you to Mom. For being there, and here, on that hard day, and always. For well-timed lunches and constant love. For teaching me to give sorrow words, and how to grieve with strength.

Thank you.

This picture? It’s the very same shot – taken from our hospital room – as the gloomy one above. Isn’t it amazing that depending on what setting we choose, on how we tweak our existential lens, the resulting view can be more melancholy or magical?

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Do you agree with Shakespeare that it is important to give sorrow words, that unspoken grief will lead to a broken heart? If you blog, are you hesitant to explore sadness so publicly? Do you agree that written words are not necessarily sufficient to grapple with grief? Do you think how we see the world is largely up to us?

I care what you think. Perhaps too much.

I use the term you very broadly, to connote readers of this blog in particular, and other people in general. The point here is that I am concerned, and often excessively so, about opinions other than my own.

Even now. I am immersed in an odd and wonderful time now. I am mere days out from welcoming my little girl and my body and mind are riddled with exhaustion and hormones. Depending on the moment, I feel fortunate or fuzzy or frantic. Things are going quite well here – the baby is eating and sleeping well – but still. This is a new world, a fresh planet, one that spins wildly and wistfully on an axis unique and unknown. Much of the time, I just feel like I am along for the ride. I think this is probably par for the newborn course?

So, you see, this is not a time to worry too intensely about others, about audience. This is not a time to fret about my following. This is a time to surrender. To put myself and my family first. To focus on the exquisite story of my present day.

And yet. Despite cruel exhaustion, my mind roams. To this blog. To my books, written and pondered and imagined. To dreams and doubts. And when this happens, I feel a surge of anxiety, a sinister parade of shoulds. I chide myself for this, for being weak enough to allow outside stuff to creep in now to this decidedly inside time. And then? I chide myself for chiding myself. After all, this is a tricky time and I think I am doing the best I can. (I think.)

Where am I going with this, you ask. And it is a good question, a fair one, because this is a ramble no doubt, a ramble sprung from the depths of a sleepy soul. And so, I will clarify. Or try.

I have spent a lot of time and energy and emotion creating this blog, and striking a balance between more personal and more universal posts. Maybe you’ve noticed, but for every post I write about my little girls, I pen one about existence. I celebrate the fact that ILI’s audience is diverse – some of you are parents, but many of you are not. Many of you are women, but I have my loyal men. I adore the fact that the discussions here are broad in nature and do not readily fit a singular category.

And so. Here’s the issue as I see it. Right now? I am in a little and lovely world with my baby and my family where I am filled with thoughts about just those things – worlds and babies and family. My questions have tapered in scope, for now at least, and are more domestic and familial in nature. Which isn’t to say that they aren’t interesting or important. Just that they are about this. This time. This phase. This slice of my life.

So what? The so what is that my instinct is to continue to post here – and quite regularly – but doing so might mean posting a bit more about parenthood and home life than I normally do. Doing so might mean a slight, albeit temporary, departure for this blog. And if I’m being honest, I fear that some of you might tire of this.

So, yes, we are back where we started 574 words ago: I care what you think. Perhaps too much.

Now it’s time for you to tell me not to worry, that you like my stories about babies and sleeplessness and domestic dilemmas, that you will stick with me during this baby phase.

(Go on. Tell me what I need to hear. Pretty please.)

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Do you care too much what others think? Is this avoidable or part of what it means to be human? If you blog, how much and how often do you think about your audience and crafting posts that will appeal to that audience? Will you stick with me during the next bit of time even if my blog posts largely center around this latest scene of my domestic identity and existence?