We live in the desert and it’s beautiful.

Last night, the moon shone through our bedroom window and I imagined it made us safe, that the man in the moon of our childhoods existed and watched down on us as we slept, dreaming dreams of islands and babies and loves and futures together.

It was bright and I pretended it made our skin look creamier, milky with innocence and passion and dreams, as I curled myself into the curve of my husband, his back my shield from the anxiety that sometimes comes.

We slept and tossed and rested and woke with the sun, my son, who got up when the day did.

The routine isn’t the same yet, for anyone. My babies are happy. I see it in their smiles, hear it in their laughs, know it when they skip down the hall or curl up in the reading chair with a DVD.  Yesterday was different than before. They are connected to their stepfather, who cares for them during the day, who plays with them and makes them swings and sings them songs on his guitar, who has a way with them now that I don’t.

I am grateful for this connection. I am happy they are loved and safe and content and silly and full of the life we should all feel.

I am adjusting to not being as integral a part of that web of family we have. I am getting to know my role as newspaper editor, working mom in the true sense, not the privileged sense I had for the past two years where I worked full-time but picked up my kids from school every day at 3:30. I am getting over myself, my maternal longing to always be there, to take care of everything not just for my babies but for my husband, who doesn’t need me to do those things like make the bed or cover him up because he’s not cold or take the trash out the morning before it has to be set out anyway just because he mentioned it.

I am adjusting to this new me.

We are adjusting to this new life that is miraculously beautiful, full of experiences and moments and just getting by and holy-cow-this-is-my-life and anticipation for what’s to come, the show three weeks from now, the Easter Egg hunt this Saturday, the swim lessons that start Monday, the newspaper that publishes on the 18th, the everything else.

Here in this desert where love blossoms freely.