And then John walked into my life. Into the bank, actually, where I was working as a loan officer. One look at him—those warm, brown eyes in that comfortably handsome face, that too-short hair with the adorable cowlick—and everything else faded to gray while Shania Twain sang “From This Moment On” with all the violins. It was love at first sight.

“No such thing,” Jo scoffed when I called to tell her. “It’s a biological construct. Chemical attraction to promote pair bonding.”

For an English major, she could be awfully dense sometimes. I knew better. This was the man I was going to marry.

After I got pregnant, he quit teaching and went to work for Mr. Laurence at his big car dealership. I missed our time together, the lazy Sunday afternoons, the long Christmas break. The evenings when he used to come home without stress bunching his jaw and shoulders.

But we couldn’t raise a family on his teacher’s salary, John had explained earnestly. And one of us needed to be home full-time with the twins.

Well. I knew how his own mother had struggled to make ends meet. I remembered how our lives had changed after Daddy gave up his congregation. Like most parents, we made sacrifices.

Not that my staying home was a sacrifice.

In the car, I sang. “Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go . . .” Daisy chirped along. DJ kicked his feet in time to the music. Love for them squeezed my chest so tight I could scarcely breathe.

Bunyan had grown in layers, like an onion. At the center was the historic district full of retired lawyers and B and Bs, within walking distance of the church, the library, and the waterfront. Then the gated communities, springing up like cattails along the river with their boat slips and golf course memberships, where my friend Sallie Moffat lived. Our neighborhood was beyond that, on the road out of town, a neat subdivision bulldozed in between the trailers and old tobacco barns quietly going to ruin under veils of kudzu.

The parking lot was full of shoppers in town for the farmers’ market. But I found a spot two streets over, down by the waterfront. Slinging my giant mommy bag over my shoulder, I lifted Daisy out of her car seat (“I walk, Mommy!” she insisted), buckled DJ into the stroller, and handed him his blanket. Picking up and moving things—bags of groceries, stacks of mail, scattered toys, the kids . . . That was my day. Actually, that pretty much summed up my life since Daisy and DJ were born. Two and a half years ago, two minutes apart.

In the delivery room—before DJ was whisked away, before my tummy was stitched and stapled—the nurse held each baby close to my face so I could touch them with one hand, kissing their precious, pink, squishy cheeks while they cried. I’d cried, too, tears of relief and joy and exhaustion. Even John’s beautiful brown eyes were wet. This is it, I’d thought then, overwhelmed with love. Marveling at their tiny fingernails, their adorable pursed lips, the delicate fringe of their eyelashes. This is everything. Finally, like my sisters, I had found my calling. Not a writer like Jo or an artist like Amy or a musician like Beth. I was born to be a mom. Like our mom.