There on the sofa, as I nursed Maxie and her eyes slid closed, I said to the girls, 'I think nursing is where kisses come from.' I had been thinking about it. Nursing had to be the place where nurturing and sweet milk and soft skin and mouths and warmth all came together and started to mean something about love. I had always assumed kissing was a learned thing, like waving bye-bye or speaking a language. But since Maxie, I'd decided that it was innate, the adult version of something we know to do from the moment we're born. All of it tied together in the cycle of life.

The best things about womanhood might possibly even be the conversations. The chatting. The gabbing. The whispering. The hands-on-hips eye-rolling. The yukking-it up.

We build our lives in moments, and even the ones we can't remember become the story of who we are.

My goal is to try to be as happy as I can - going through every day just as it is.

You are writing the story of your only life every single minute of every day.

Our lives disappear, even as we live them.

I guess that's the upside of not being young anymore... You know from experience that the struggle always leads, in some way, to something better.