Being a mother has been like having an alarm clock radio shoved into my brain. It’s on 24 hours of every day, waking moments and sleep both victim to this open channel streaming an endless, ever-evolving litany of worries, fears, corrections, self-flagellation, montages of moments and words and sticky fingers and baby kisses. A shifting, 4-D rubiks cube of to do lists and medicines and appointments and improvements and plans and hopes hopes hopes, piles and mounds of iridescent, luminous hope. Hope that I’m doing an ok job, that my demons aren’t leaving scars on their tender hides, that they’ll have their dad’s stamina for the grueling drive required to live in this fucked up world, that they are happy, fairly well adjusted, passionate, true to themselves, that they are not afflicted the way I have been, that I am not an affliction on them. A tunnel into my brain, the universe pouring in the stardust my babies are made of, the attendant madness that so many women take in stride and handle with grace and mercy and strength, that has handled me instead, and roughly so. This channel of inescapable noise and static looping through and through my mind, and at its center their gilded, shining strands braided together. Through the burning heart of me this braid weaves and stitches, pulling new pieces together from old messes. Forcing me into new shapes I’m unsur