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I'm Maggie Smith and this is the Slow down. If you have children, even if they are adults now, you probably remember the time when it felt like too much. Those early months are brutal emotionally and physically. Your body is not your own, your space is not your own, your sleep is not your own. Even your own mind feels co opted by the new baby. When I think back to those early days, months and years of having a baby or a baby and a toddler at the same time, I know I felt overwhelmed, but I can't remember how I felt. I can barely conjure the physicality of that exhaustion. I think our minds protect us so that we have the courage to do it again. I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining or like I'm advising people against having children. I'm not. My kids are the loves of my life. I am so glad they're here and that we are together. I am also so very glad they're teenagers now and not newborns. I'm glad they put themselves to bed at night and can get themselves a drink if they're thirsty and can tell me how they feel so I don't have to worry. And guess there were times when mothering felt overwhelming. I'm so glad we got through the too muchness to get to this place. Now I always want more of them. It's funny how that works, isn't it? For years I craved more freedom, more independence. And then when I got it, part of me missed being so needed. Today's poem captures the too muchness of motherhood, especially in those years with very young children and the desire for freedom, even if that freedom is only imagined. Of course, as a mother of teens, I want to tell the speaker that freedom is coming. The Crux by Megan Peake when at the end of the week, one child's body is ribboned with fever and the other's is sleepless unless cocooned under my breast, I say, enough. I say enough. And when my husband asks, enough of what? I make a list in my head, an endless list of enoughs. The cycle of incurable colds plaguing our house, the dog's piss spots on the carpet. Another day where I'm lost in my body when my name isn't Megan but Mom or Mommy. What's more repetitive than the wail of a newborn, the tantrums of a human becoming more human? Love? Maybe grief. Isn't that the crux of motherhood, the knot of loving and grieving and loving and grieving, all the selves lived and unlived? Of course, I'm nowhere close to having an answer for him when the babe nods off milk driveling into the cushion of her neck. Oh God, Some days I think I've made the biggest mistake bringing children here. Here, where I save up my sadness, stash it under mattresses and in sock drawers. Here, where I moonlight as someone else entirely, where, given the chance, I I'd hop the train that roars through my mind each night without looking back. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. To get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter. And find us on Instagram @downdownshow and blueskylowdownshow.org hi, it's Maggie. Thanks for listening to the Slowdown. Whether you press play to find calm or vivid inspiration, we're glad you're here. As a public media podcast, we rely on listener support to share these moments of poetry. Please consider donating today@slowdownshow.org donate.