The Arrival

It came on a Tuesday. The clinic called to confirm the C-section date. I had two days to get to Mombasa. I booked the flight within the hour.

Twenty-seven hours of travel. I barely slept. I watched movies I don't remember. I ate food I couldn't taste. I was already somewhere else entirely.

The hospital was calm. The staff were kind. I sat in a waiting area that felt both ordinary and completely surreal — the kind of place where enormous things happen every day.

When they told me it was time, I stood up and walked toward the room where my daughters were about to be born. My legs were steady. My heart was not.

I heard them before I saw them. Two separate cries. Two separate people. After everything — the years, the transfers, the failures, the waiting — that sound was the most real thing I had ever experienced.

They were small. Twins often are at 36 weeks. They went to the NICU for monitoring. I stood at the glass and looked at them and tried to understand that these were my daughters.

Not what I expected. I expected pure joy — the movie version, the tears streaming down my face, the immediate certainty. What I felt was something quieter and more enormous. A shift. Like the world had rearranged itself around two small people who didn't know yet what they'd already put me through.

The joy came in waves over the days that followed. In the middle of a feeding. When one of them wrapped her fingers around mine. When I realized I would never not love them — not for a single second of the rest of my life.