my beating heart

The sun was already setting and the chill of an early November evening settled upon us as I rode the Bakfiets back to the school for the third time that day. Townes chatted contentedly to me while I rocked the heavy bicycle back onto its brass and rubber stand and looked behind me toward the white-lacquered gate of the school. Parents and babysitters were gathering but no children had yet emerged. Inside the sandy brick walls of the school, the kids would be gathering coats and scarves and mittens before gripping the handles of their cartables, the rectangular, wheeled backpacks that are ubiquitous among French schoolchildren, to follow their extra-curricular instructors out into the courtyard.

Across the tiny street to my right, a couple of twenty-something guys unlocked the front door of their narrow two-story townhouse and walked inside, casually dropping their effects onto a kitchen table near the door. Through their enormous Dutch windows--every house here is visible all the way through to the garden, with no window trimmings to impede the curious glances of passers-by--I could see them collapse onto a sofa and turn on the television.

Soon Violette was wriggling onto the padded wooden bench of the Bakfiets alongside her brother, and I stole another glance at the house. The guys were now nestled even more comfortably into the couch, feet up on a coffee table, hands dangling nonchalantly inside bags of potato chips. I thought of the four or five hours of hard work ahead of me--the ride home, a mad scramble to get dinner on the table while simultaneously mopping up any mischief that Townsend was getting into and gently encouraging/enforcing homework and piano practicing, the forced cheery patience as they resisted pajamas and lights out, my anxiously awaiting the moment when their breathing would settle into the slow regularity of sleep so that I could rush back out of their bedroom to fold a load of laundry and clean up the dinner mess before finally dropping into my own bed. Just before drifting off into delicious but soon-to-be-interrupted sleep, I would set my alarm for six forty-five a.m., when I would begin again the long day of a weekday widow.

Looking at the guys and their television, I exhaled in a deep sigh. Lucky, I muttered.

I rocked the bicycle forward and kicked the brass stand back up with a loud, satisfying click, and started along the narrow cobblestone street and around a corner. I looked at the little fawn-colored heads nestled together in front of me, talking excitedly about school and who knows what else, reveling in being together after the separation of the day.

I'm lucky too, I said aloud, smiling gently to myself, and the breeze picked up my words and carried them away like a birthday balloon as I cycled us home for dinner.

--

The first performance of the evening was still going on behind black metal double doors. Outside in the lobby, where long farm tables and industrial chairs rested on Persian rugs for an indie recording-studio effect, I sipped green tea from a glass and watched Steve pacing around outside the theatre on a work call, hunching down into his dark, high-collared jacket, newsboy cap pulled down low against the wind.  I relaxed back into my chair, content to have an unaccounted-for moment, and pulled out my iPhone to distract myself with the exoticism of photos by strangers and friends on Instagram. After a minute, I realized that I could hear the loud, rhythmic beat of my heart, so pronounced that it seemed that it would be audible outside of my body. I put a finger on the pulse at my throat, and felt the evenness of it in time with the drumming in my ears. Maybe I just wasn't used to quiet anymore, had forgotten what it was like to be able to hear my own heartbeat.

Steve came back inside just before the next performance, and we stood with the rest of the very white Dutch audience and listened to a disarmingly sweet young black man from Brooklyn rap his interpretation of William Shakepeare's sonnets. Later, we would see a one-woman performance of the story of Horatio from Hamlet that danced on the edge of sanity and completely blew our minds.

At home, after our lovely babysitter, Ksenija, had gone home and Steve had mounted the stairs to check on the kids, I perched atop the pot-bellied stove in our living room to regard the painting hanging above our sofa, which we had finished making a few days before, and I pulled out my iPhone to take a photo. Again, in the quiet, I could hear my heart beating loudly. I tilted my head, puzzled and a bit worried, and listened closely. I laughed. It was the sleep machine app on my phone. Violette or Townes had no doubt slunk away, unobserved, with my phone earlier in the evening and, scrolling through the white-noise options, had settled on this one.  It had been beating away for hours.

And that, really, is what they do, these darling children of mine: they drain my battery, but they make my heartbeat so audible that I can hear it as it beats proudly away in adoration of these two tiny miracles. Happy birthdays, my girl and, in exactly one week, my boy. I am so, so blessed to share my life with yours.  May you grow in stature and wisdom, but always retain the wonder that you have now, at the beginning of seven and on the cusp of three, and the indulgence of your own imaginations. You are, and will always be, the most enigmatic, engaging, life-altering gifts that God has ever given me.