And yet, after the haze and euphoria of holding my beautiful babies in my arms faded, I wasn’t entirely prepared for the mundane moments of parenthood: the maddening tasks, the arguing, the negotiating over food and frocks. Now, two years later, I can name the exact moment when the word Mama lost its luster.
It had been a long day. I was finally in the bathtub at home, decompressing.
“Mama!” I heard Mila yell from the living room. “Can you bring us water? We’re thirsty!”
“Ask Daddy!” I called back. Henry was sitting on the couch next to them, willing and able to serve.
“Water!” she repeated. “Mama!”
That was it. That was the moment when the word lost a little of its sheen.
WHEN MILA WAS three and a half, my mom was in town visiting. The three of us went out shopping. The first part of the day was lovely. We strolled. We snacked. We people-watched. We talked to Mila about the pigeons and the squirrels.
And then in an instant our idyllic outing took a turn. Mila went limp and boneless. Somehow, in spite of her floppiness, she was able to ferociously kick the pavement with her tiny sneakered feet and to chop the air with her little hands. The trigger for all this rage? Her grandmother and mother wouldn’t buy her a pink pig watch at a store. My mom and I are both of the school that you don’t give in to tantrums, so we moved away from that store and tried to get back to my apartment. We used every toddler parenting trick, including redirection: Look, another squirrel!
“Mama, Mama, Mama!” Mila screamed over and over, like a human robocall.
I cringed. My mom cringed. The black-suited Secret Service agents following my mom cringed. Their job is to keep my mom inconspicuous. Mila was not helping. At all.
People looked up from their phones and stared at the adorable little girl who seemed to be in serious distress. Then they looked at the little girl’s elegant grandmother, the former First Lady, in her neat sweater set.
They also saw the frazzled mother, an overwhelmed thirtysomething woman whose hair was a mess and who was clearly in the wrong. If I had been one of these strangers, I might have judged me, too.
On that city sidewalk, there was no place to hide. But other times, there are hiding spots, and I take advantage of them. Once when the children’s witching hour, that dinner-to-sleep window, was coming to a close, I put the girls in bed. We’d read books, brushed teeth, gotten water, read more books, said prayers. I stood in the kitchen, utterly exhausted, eating the girls’ string cheese for dinner.
I heard Poppy call out, “Mama, Mama, Mama!” as she escaped from her bed for the hundredth time. I was briefly reminded of something my father used to say: “There’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you, so stop trying so hard.”
I should have run to Poppy immediately, I know. Instead, I stepped into the pantry and pulled the door closed, so during those few seconds before she came running into the kitchen and found me, I could finish the last strand of my cheese stick in peace.
Sister Love and Sister Strife
When we were seven, my sister and I began an annual tradition of traveling from Dallas to Midland, Texas (a one-hour flight), to visit our Pa and Grammee. We felt so sophisticated on that first trip when our mom kissed us goodbye and we walked onto the plane by ourselves under the watchful eye of the flight attendant.
On this first unchaperoned flight, my sister and I got into a terrible fight—one that I may or may not have instigated. Barbara, tears in her eyes, arms folded, made it clear that she never wanted to see or speak to me again. She could not wait to get off the plane so we could part ways forever.
At just that moment, a male passenger leaned over to Barbara and, gesturing at me, said, “Are you going to spank her or should I?”
Instantly Barbara transferred her rage from me to this stranger who had just threatened her beloved sister. We had a new common enemy, and our fight was forgotten. By the time we walked off the plane in Midland toward our waiting grandparents, we were holding hands.
Since the publication of Sisters First, which Barbara and I wrote about the joys of sisterhood, people often ask us, “Didn’t you ever fight?” At one tour stop, a woman said, “Am I doing something wrong? My twins are always fighting!” At another, a woman said, “I fight with my sister constantly. I love her, but we are always arguing. How can we be more like you two?”
To set the record straight, we are not magically peaceful siblings; as children we fought often. Once when we were thirteen, changing clothes in a baseball stadium bathroom for an opening-day game, I threw a Steve Madden chunky-heeled mule—this was the 1990s; they were very in—at my sister. I watched as the shoe flew through the air as if in slow motion and made contact with her head. I panicked when she started bleeding from her scalp.
“I’m so sorry!” I said. Had I permanently damaged my sister? Would she need stitches? Would she have a scar? Embarrassingly, more important to me in that moment: When it was discovered, would my parents ground me?
Once it was clear that the wound was superficial and the patient would live, I segued into damage control: “If you tell Mom and Dad, I’m going to tell them about what you did last week . . .”
The truth was, we both had indiscretions to hide. I may have had the advantage of size and strength, but Barbara was scrappy. I might punch, but she had strong nails and wasn’t afraid to use them.
I remember many physical and verbal fights, but I don’t remember what a single one was about. They were about everything and nothing, probably. I do know they were never about boys. We favor very different romantic types. Growing up, Barbara always liked a guy with a tattoo and a little edge. I dated the class president. I think more than anything else our fights were the result of a clash of temperaments, of the way we move differently through the world.
I see this difference in one way or another nearly every time we are together. For example, during our book tour, we had just boarded a plane and put our bags away when Barbara spotted someone a few rows up and grabbed my arm. “Look!” she said. “It’s Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative!”
I had read about his work, but I wouldn’t have been able to recognize him. Barbara, meanwhile, knew who it was from glimpsing his partial profile.
“He does such great work!” she said. She went on to give me his full résumé, down to naming wrongfully incriminated people he had freed. She finished by saying, “I have to go and thank him.”
At this point, passengers were still boarding the plane. Anyone who has flown recently knows that going against the tide is a dangerous proposition. There was no room in the aisle, but she stood up, intent on making her way toward him.
“Are you really going to go now?” I asked her. “People are still boarding the plane. You’ll get crushed. You can thank him after we take off. At least wait until everyone’s on b—”
Before I had finished my plea, she was already halfway down the aisle, moving rapidly, like a salmon swimming upstream. I watched in horror as my thin twin sister was almost taken out five times by rolling bags being thrust into overhead bins. Then I heard her greet him and say, shaking his hand, “Thank you so much for your work. It inspires me in everything I do.”
When she came back I said, “Barbara, I can’t believe you just did that.”