It’s been a month since I hauled my suitcase up the narrow, steep stairs, slid the key into the door and stepped into the tiny, dark apartment that belonged to a stranger.

29 days since I sat on a West Village fire escape with a cup of hot coffee resting on the railing, at 4am, jet-lagged, watching loud friends in their 20s stumbling in high heels, hailing cabs.

28 days since from the same spot, I heard the blond woman, hair a mess-she’d obviously fallen asleep somewhere-loudly whispering into her cell phone, recounting the events of the night. I

27 days since I met up with an old friend and to the random melodies of magical jazz, filled the scarce silence with stories that we chose to tell.

26 days, since I walked the city for 12 hours, getting on and off the subway as if it were a free Disney extravaganza, and I, 10-years-old.

25 days since a late-winter blizzard buried New York under a few inches of snow, emptying the streets of anyone but brave tourists in soaking sneakers, subways transforming into makeshift homeless shelters for the day. I, schlepping bags of precious underwear and t-shirts I’d just bought, because not a minute can be wasted, through the evil storm.

24 days since I began to wonder when I will miss my son, when the separation anxiety that crippled me on my last trip will take over.

23 days since I accepted that it will never happen, that he’s finally old enough to be away from me, that I’m finally ready to remember who I am, even if for a few fast days.

22 days since I walked around Barnes and Noble and Union Square, taking deep breaths, as if I could keep their air inside me until next time.

21 days since I gave thanks to Saint Patrick’s Day parade traffic that kept me from getting to the airport quickly, for even Queens’ highways looked beautiful that day.

21 days since I wanted to stay forever, 21 days since my four-year-old boy ran to me with a bouquet of flowers bigger than him, 21 days since I realized a new chapter had begun.

I just made a stir fry that puts the world’s worst cook to shame. And I cook well. Yesterday, I burnt my son’s rice, threw it away, put on another batch and forgot to add water. I threw my phone into the kitchen garbage and spent half an hour calling myself, hearing it ring, unable to find it, crawling around the floor as if it could be was under the floorboards. I put a pack of spaghetti in the fridge. I’ve forgotten to take a shower, until it’s so late, I can barely move.

We all think we remember it, that first love, I thought I remembered mine, but I’m starting to believe that our first true love stories may happen much earlier than we realize. They happen before we are even conscious of what love is, which is what makes these stories so real. Pure.

There’s a boy and a girl, I’ll call them B and G, they met a year ago in preschool, he was barely potty trained, barely spoke a word. She, a little older, ran away from him, then immediately to him. They shared an interest in trains and bulldozers, they shared a classroom, they shared the sudden flood of knowledge that only kids their age stay afloat in, grow from.

As I find myself slowly waking from the stupor of early motherhood, falling into back into the rhythm of toddler-free humanity, I already know what I will miss from these exhausting, yet miraculous years.

The smell of Crayola crayons.
Soft couch pillow forts.
The pain of him running and ramming into my chest when I open the door to pick him up from preschool.
The feeling of those tiny hands wrapped around my neck, “I missed you mommy” whispers tickling my ear.
The magic of the words “disonaurs” and “sumic.”
Referring to boiling spaghetti as cooking.
Getting away with putting elastics in his hair, while accepting his refusal to get a haircut. Because it does not matter.
The freedom of things not mattering.
The sound of that pure, innocent laughter.
The awe and amazement of everything new that I see through his eyes.

Imagine you’re a painter, the only painter in the world working on one specific canvas, with paints that are different to everyone else’s, a paintbrush that is like no other, and with each brushstroke, your art takes on a life of its own. Your painting is unpredictable, yet it is in your hands to make it into art.

Now imagine this painting is a child. And there you have it, parenthood.

A year ago, I pulled the door of my son’s preschool shut and my eyes swelled with tears of fear and pride. His first day, his first time alone. Today, I slammed that green, iron door behind me, and if it had not been raining, or if my husband hadn’t been with me, I would have torn off my clothes and run around the block screaming Aretha Franklin’s “Freedom.” Instead I drove through morning traffic, serenely, road-rage free.

Back home, I first sat on that toilet for ever, for reason other than that nobody appreciates alone time there than mothers of young children. Then I roamed the house, didn’t make the beds, didn’t do laundry, didn’t even wash the morning milk bottle. By 10.30 I thought a day had gone by, so I went to the supermarket and bought myself food, smirking at the women with toddlers in their carts demanding candy at the register.

So there I am, legs hanging out the trunk of our car, parked on the shoulder of a national highway, looking for the grapes. I find them and wash them using a plastic bottle of water. I’m wearing normal clothes and shoes for the first time in ten days, not a cold, wet bathing suit, yet the wind and dust raised by the speeding cars disrespect that, covering my legs and feet in stains.

The first few days were magnificent, carefree, happy. For the kids. We’d gone to an island where our fiends and their kids already were. By day six, I was done. I never again wanted to change a wet bathing suit on an excited, giggly, sun-kissed child. Or a cold, tired, whiney one. Our beach towels that were originally, soft and fluffy, but has turned into a salty planks of cotton wood. Sand was everywhere, on the floor, in our beds, in the shower, in my bra. I’d dipped my head into the water a total of two times, the wind had blown and turned my hair into a artful bird nest, I knew it would remain so until my hair mask and I were reunited at home.

At least all children’s palates begged for spaghetti and rice, limiting our time in the kitchen. A few slices of cucumber and tomato, and we no longer felt like a bad parents. Soon, bedtimes became painful, pre-dawn risings even more so. On the last night, I feel asleep in a chair. A feat I had not accomplished in 40-odd years.

So on the shoulder of that highway, a highway which in many countries would be considered a side street, I was happy to wash some tiny village grapes while buses of tourists sped by. My son whined in the back seat, faster mommy, I’m hungry, I miss my friends, I want to go back to our village and swim in the sea. I handed him the fruit, dreaming of its alcohol-infused juice in the fridge at home. We drove off, and I turned back to look at him. His blond hair was blonder, longer, it covered his twinkling eyes, his white skin a light shade of bronze, his little feet kicking my seat to the rhythm of the music, while he swallowed the sweet grapes.

It was his first time, his first real summer vacation, and even though I’m over it and the next ten to come, I only hope he remembers every moment of it, because none of it, was for or about me.

There is a mother of a newborn on the beach, her sunbed is next to mine, she is skinny, nervous, exhausted. Her husband had taken the infant to sit on the warm sand just a few meters away. She keeps getting up, running over there, coming back. They change the baby’s diaper three times in half an hour.

I try to read, my three year old is playing with daddy in the water, but I can’t concentrate, her stress is bringing back memories of the first months.

Motherhood comes less naturally to some of us. It takes us longer than others to get used to living for another soul, to become selfless, to learn to parent without constant stress, to learn to embrace what we’ve created.

“Excuse me, is it ok if I put this here, there is no shade anywhere else,” she mumbles. It takes me a few seconds to register that she is speaking English, pushing the stroller through the sand.

“Of course,” I say, trying to make more room for her on the crowded beach.
“I feel like I’m invading your space,” she says. “This is Greece in August; there is no personal space,” I smile. The look in her eyes is lost, speedy, she struggles to place the stroller in the perfect spot as her husband places the baby inside.

“Don’t worry, I remember how it is all too well,” I tell her.

“Oh, good, I suddenly don’t feel so alone,” she says.

She pauses, takes a step back, “Does it get easier? Please tell me it gets easier.”

I want to laugh, at myself mostly, having asked that question so many times. I know I should tell her it just gets a different kind of hard.

“It does,” I say instead. “I promise you, it does.”

The first two years of motherhood, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and coming to terms with the fact that we will never sleep again, come to teach us that life’s grandest magic is brought through discomfort and pain. Feeding young children comes to take all magic, joy and hope of that life, away.

Just as our precious angels move onto solids, learn to scoop up rice with their spoons, one fine day they decide that the only acceptable food is spaghetti exactly like you made it yesterday.

At first you ignore the problem, thinking that they’ll get hungry enough and eat their lentils, but they don’t. (My son ate bananas for six months.) You begin to google child-friendly meals, run around town looking for the perfect ingredients, while stuffing your screaming kid with candy, try to involve them in preparing the food as these smart sites suggest, they eat nothing, you try again. You are calm, together, you know you shouldn’t make a big deal out of this, it’ll only backfire. Until while trying to carve a dinosaur out of a chicken nugget, you suddenly are not. You find yourself trying to stuff food in their mouths, begging them to at least lick it, threatening them with no snacks. But nothing. You scream. You cry. You throw the chicken across the room.

You miss your mommy.

And they still win.

You boil the spaghetti. Exactly like you do every time, there are only so many ways to prepare that intricate meal. You give in. Hell, you even serve yourself a plate of the tasteless empty carb. And silently slice a cucumber and put it on a side plate, because you still believe in miracles.

“Yuck. This spaghetti is yucky, mommy. I want spaghetti with rice.”

I retain my cool.

He stuffs the cucumber in his mouth.

“This cucumber has made me stuffed,” he says, cucumber still in mouth, leaving the table.

Two seconds later, he’s standing in front of me, holding his plastic snack bowl with both hands, looking into my eyes like one of the orphans in Oliver Twist.

“Mommy, I’m starving. I need cookies.”