Number One Daughter

#1 is asleep in my bed right now. 4 1/2 months pregnant, done with her baby's father once again, at such loose ends... How to even describe the heart ache you feel when you can not just bundle your babies up in your arms and keep them safe forever?

Talking with J, trying to figure out how it comes to this. Why? With this girl, I blame myself. I was too weak and too stupid to protect her when she was small and now I have to figure out how to help her learn to protect herself. She is not lost, I know, because I was not lost.

It is most useful, I imagine, to turn my mind to the future and think about her little baby. Will #1 be strong enough, in the places where I was so weak? The best thing to do, the thing I think I have to try to make her do, is the most painful thing I have ever contemplated. But isn't that the true measure of love? To be able to unselfishly take into yourself the pain that you do not wish on another?