Story of a life

A few weeks ago, I lost a friend. I want to call her my friend. She was more like a person that I looked up to though. In fact, exactly the perosn I looked up to. The first time I met her, I felt as if the life I had always wanted had been plucked form my dreams, had been fashioned into reality and had been given to her. I looked in awe and wonder at the floor to cieling bookshelves in her sitting room. The minimal yet cozy home. The children she was about to drive to silat class. The backyard with children's swings, the way she wrapped her hijab, the little nook that she said she worked in after putting kids to bed at 10 pm, where her laptop still lay open from the night before, the perfect crepes she presented to me for breakfast after hosting me for a night simply because I was in her area to participate in an Arabic instructors retreat. The heart, the mind, the beauty of ehr face and soul, the house, the work she did, the children she was raising, her law degree, all of it, ...

Perhaps the beauty of mamahood is that one never does have enough peace of mind or just peace enough to ever write about it. The chaos of folding laundry over and over, picking up bottles, washing bottles, filling up bottles, warming up bottles, picking up toys, playing with toys, cooking, cleaning, reading the same cardboard books over and over, incessant planning, non-stop worrying, completing a Masters, working on a citizenship application, soothing a sick baby who caught a cold at his swimming lesson, taking baby to his swimming lessons every week, physical therapy for the yet-to-be-healed body from birth, trying to keep up with the remnants of a long-past social circle, evolving into new person oneself,