One day at a time.

May 20, San Jose.

I left the circus late in February, in the McAllen area of the Texas-Mexican border. Almost three months missing and a 800-mile road trip from there to New Mexico, countless other, shorter but no less exhausting trips between towns across New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California, miles and miles of highway barreling through towns and country in the dead of the night, ghost towns, imagined country seeming to stretch forever beyond the glass panes of the truck, the children sleeping behind me, the noise and rattle of the diesel engine lulling me, sleepiness creeping in, a long day awaiting still, the night much too brief to rest.
All this lies ahead of me now, with two babies instead of one, nights a brief moment between feedings, days long with nursing, playing and cajoling, the day's labor done if I've bathed them and cooked a decent meal, one day at a time, a woman said at a deli counter in Dallas when I asked her how she had coped with raising three kids much closer in age than Dylan and Nicolas, one day at a time.