Some days motherhood feels like a knife edge.

Children are unrestrained and ever-rolling balls of desire, emotion, and will. Each demand and question from a child can feel like an impossible choice; do I disappoint them, or yield to their desires. Over and over I have to answer the question, what are the boundaries that I’m drawing now, and now, and now. As they grow and change, as I grow and change these boundary lines are redrawn.

Sometimes it feels like the question is: what I will sacrifice. What parts of myself am I willing to give, and which corners do I hold inviolate, apart from their hungry, sticky, grasping little fingers.

They will eat me up, always and forever asking more than I feel I can give. And while they ask and cajole and whine and require with relentless frequency, I still want to pursue the things that I desire, things that are totally unrelated to these creatures born of my body.

Is it this kind of sacrifice, really? Is it really a dissection of my body, my time, my very self into two piles: one pile laid out for the hungry children, the other reserved for my hungry self?