We are nomads, Anya and I. Walking the dark shiny spring-winter streets of Washington. When she is 14, I will remember this day. I will remember how she laughed at all the bumps on the street. The dips and the rollercoasting of uneven sidewalks. She is one baby attached to a stroller made for two. She is a twin, I tell people who tell me she is beautiful. She has another. I tell them. All. Of them, I tell. As if Anya isn't enough.

The other space in the stroller is filled with bags and vintage orange wall hangings. Beneath is full, too. 10 years of things packed under there. 10 years of my life packed under this one baby girl. Washington winter is dressed up in spring time, so I drap my couch coat over Anya's feet. Corn toes who don't want to keep their socks on. She is wearing a lavender jogging suit with a cupcake on the front. Team cupcake. And she has a healthy bit of mashed carrots up her nose.

Jeff is at the doctor with the Rachel Roo. She is getting xrays for possible lung weirdness. And again, I find myself with Anya as my sole company. I take her for granted, this Anya. I know I do. She is the loveliest creature alive and I know I don't appreciate this enough.

I am lonely walking home after dark. I am lonely on a street of people with the world's loveliest baby smiling up at me. I take the long way home because I don't want to pass where the cab hit me. I take the long way and I start to cry. I don't know why I am crying, but I know I need to. I don't know if it is the physical difficulty of pushing the baby and my things nearly 2 miles or if it is the sum of my recent actions.

Said ten years of goods under the pram are from my old office. Packed away weirdness that I never needed is going home with me because after ten years of working at the same place with the same people, I have made a change. I am free from it. There were a million reasons to do this and a million reasons not to. I choose the doing. And this is the first time I have cried about it. And my tears are so hot on face. They are so hot in my eyes, like a sinus headache. Painy and hot and real. I want to break down long and hard and cry for a day. But the girl is looking at me, slightly concerned. So, I sing her to sleep. A song about silly Anya is a nomad. And mommy, too. After a long stay is on the move move move.

And we move move move. Up the hill to home. Away from the place where things are easy and people like me. Away from people who I didn't even know I loved.

And tomorrow, there will be new arrangements. And new faces and new configurations. And I will be new. And I will be fine. I will be just fine.