My sons are almost two. I think every mom goes through a period of nostalgia around their kid’s birthdays. I remember the birth obviously, and the horrible fertility crap leading up to the pregnancy. Then the horrible pregnancy that involved vomiting daily to the point that my eyes had broken blood vessels by the end of the pregnancy. Then the horrible C-section. My sons were born just before midnight on November 12th, 2015. Not many people remember, but November 13th was a Friday. I essentially told my doctor to get them out before midnight or I was going home until Saturday because my sons would not be born on Friday the 13th. My Doctor was true to her word and got them out just in the knick of time.

One night last week I came home from work instead of going to a meeting because my sons were battling coughs and I wanted to help put them to bed. I missed them. I came home especially early to spend time with them. Neither of them cared when I walked in, and they didn’t want to cuddle with me at all. It was like a punch in the gut. Then after they fell asleep one of them started to cry and I went up with my wife and he reached for her. Ugh. I literally felt tears stinging my eyes. In their almost two years the- them picking my wife over me- is a new development. For the first year I breastfed so they always picked me. I mean they were obsessed with breastfeeding so they practically leapt on me when I walked through the door. I know it must have hurt my wife to always be skipped over for me. But goddamnit I carried them, I nursed them, and I literally got cut open for them. I feel a little entitled to being chosen first.

To not be was freaking terrible. However, I know it made my wife feel bonded with them which is important.

Then this weekend we were traveling and I brought the worst offender in with me alone to a rest stop while my wife sat with his sleeping brother in the car. When I sat him on the counter while I paid for my coffee he clung to me. I don’t think he had ever been in a rest stop and the noises were a lot for him to manage. Then later we stopped at our favorite diner and he wanted to only sit on my lap and snuggle. All was right with the world again.

But then I was thinking about it and these kids have the ability to make me feel freaking bipolar. I was a mess thinking he didn’t need me like he used to as a baby. I was in mourning for the stages that passed, and here he was needing me again. It was fleeting and tomorrow he will probably make me feel like crap again but I reveled in it for today.

This whole being a mom thing has shaken up my reality. I thought I knew what it was like to be vulnerable to someone having been married and in love and sexually intimate with a partner. But kid’s man. They bring it to a whole new level.

Within a twenty-four hour span I can love him to the point my eyes well up and I think the pain of love can never be so profound. I can despise him for turning the freaking modem off for the hundredth time because he’s too damn smart and finds it everywhere and loves the freaking blinking button. I can laugh at him and with him. I revel in both of their laughs. And I can go through the full gamut of all of these emotions with not one kid but two.

I remember the day we came home from the hospital. I set myself up on our futon in the living room because it was lower than our bed and I could move on and off it more easily with the incision. The boys were swaddled and we laid them on the futon with us and I said, “I just can’t believe there are two,” over and over. It’s totally mind-blowing going from a family of two to a family of four in a matter of ten minutes in the OR.

I feel like some days we’ve got this Mom thing down. Then some days I’m like what the fuck were we thinking? And seriously how do mom’s of triplets or more do it? Because I would die. Literally. I would drop dead if I had more than two. I met a mom in a store right after I had the boys. She told me she was pregnant with triplets. I started to cry. So did she. We both just knew.

So this week with me going through my bipolar mom moments #45 decides to speak at an anti-LGBT convention where they are spreading around pamphlets that call homosexuality a “public health hazard”. While I was cuddling my son today in the diner, and my wife was making my other son laugh his deep belly laugh in the booth with us. I sighed because it was a perfect moment of love. And all I could picture was that pamphlet. This, this moment of light and love, is being called a hazard because of our family make-up. I felt sad, slightly defeated, and scared for what’s to come.

If love and light and acceptance are now considered a hazard. I fear for the future of our country. I fear for my sons. As I go through my every day because I’m a lesbian mom every interaction within my family has a tinge of fear. Will this be the last day we can do this in public? Will this be the last time we are welcomed in this restaurant? I try to see beyond the fear and just live in the moment and breathe it in. But it’s taxing. I try and shelter my sons from the hatred engulfing our administration. But it’s exhausting. I try and enjoy being a normal mom. But I’m not. According to some I’m a hazard.

Don’t be silent.