Two lives.

A thought popped into my mind recently (as they often do).

Ten years ago (right now) I was pregnant.

That feels a lifetime ago.

I imagine most women have some sort of 'thing' they do when they're pregnant~ They read a story to their baby, sing a certain song, eat a certain food~ and I'm sure that book, song or food will sometimes trigger that memory. Bring them back to that time.

I was getting out of the shower and as I looked at my stomach (a sad, sorry mess from the way Andrew and Joe left it), it occurred to me.  It's been ten years. Ten years since they grew and stretched and kicked and breathed inside me. Ten years.

How does that happen?

I looked out my bathroom window and there was snow on the ground.  I opened the window, closed my eyes and took a deep breath in.  I inhaled slowly and let that single breath go to every ounce of my body and I remembered.

When I was pregnant with them, my auntie (a doula) said to me, "Laura, remember that every breath you take is also a breath for them."

That was a lifetime ago.

For some reason that stuck with me.  I had a window in the shower of the house we lived in ten years ago and I would open that window while the water ran down my back and take the deepest, fullest breath and imagine it traveling to my babies.  Imagined them dancing and full inside of me from that extra crisp, cool breath from the morning air.  I did that nearly every morning.

I do it sometimes still.

More often than I thought I would.

And sometimes I feel he gets it.

Gets that breath from me and that it fills him up.

Still now.

Ten years later.

A lifetime ago.

We were watching a favorite family movie the other day (The Natural) and a line I had heard so many times before just sort of hung in the air for me.  

"I believe we have two lives.  The life we learn with and the one we live with after that."

I had my husband pause it and play it again.  

I told him that I really liked that line.

He told me he did too.

Our eyes met and I knew we were thinking the same thing.  We are living our second life.

So much has been given a new breath for me because he never took one.

But I will breathe it for him as I always have.

I will learn from it.

I will live with it.

I will be better for it.

And I will live this second life knowing it.