Allow yourself to feel in the moment. Or drown.

The Wave traveled towards me for twenty-two years, building speed and power, unperceived, or perhaps ignored, until it scooped the ground from underneath me, appropriated my footing and crashed over me, tumbled me, claimed me, and drowned me. The Wave would have its long-denied moment.

On February 13, 1991, I gave birth to my identical twin sons. That sounds lovely, does it not? And that is the fairy tale I relate to those who ask. All happy joy, joy, bassinets and blankies, bottles full of breast milk, coos and cuddles. In my introverted and private nature, I am apt to present a public story while filing the truth away. I set the agenda and present what the advertising sponsors require. People want happy horseshit social media snippets. The harsh truth, avoided. To understand The Wave, I must fulfill your Freedom of Information Act demand by retrieving the sealed file from the locked cabinet in the basement vault beyond the armed guards.

I was 22 years old and in a tumultuous relationship fraught with violence. My sons result from a rape by the man with whom I had cut ties after learning how violent he was. Sometimes gone doesn’t mean gone. After discovering I was pregnant, I refused to abort even at his violent insistence — throwing a desk onto me, causing me injury and, the doctors guessed, losing the third baby.

Tradition, Catholicism, and family pressure guilted my young self into staying with this sperm injector. The submission to family expectations negated my yet undeveloped will. The guilt of getting pregnant, the guilt of the manner in which I got pregnant, and the guilt of not bringing my sons into a traditional two-parent home forced my acquiescence. Through the pregnancy, the sperm injector and I lived together, appearances satisfied. My constant fear expressed through a list of physical ailments, including gestational diabetes. My pancreas expressed the repression that I could not.

The day of my seven-month checkup and first Lamaze class, my water broke as I entered the hospital atrium. Great timing. The attendant rushed me to the maternity floor, and I remained there, waiting, in stillness, for almost a week with no food but a saline IV, a bit of gelatin, sips of broth and quarter cups of water.

The night before the boys were born, I plead: “Okay, Gentlemen, Mommy needs you to come out because she needs a burger and some solid food! Let’s get this going.” Characteristically obedient, the boys came into the world the next morning in an efficient three-hour labor. They were both four pounds (give and take an ounce each), perfect little froggy-looking creatures with bulging eyes and translucent skin. And I was in an indescribable love.

But they could not breathe. Their toy-balloon lungs had not yet produced surfactant, so within minutes of being born and doing well on the APGAR, the neonatal staff put both boys on ventilators and IVs. The medical team also drugged me unconscious, because, well, it’s me and I was fighting to attend to my children no matter my condition. When I awoke, groggy and hemorrhaging, I struggled from the gurney, exacerbating the hemorrhage and inspiring the injection of another sleepy-shot so I would remain still. Frigging doctors. They could not appreciate. They did not understand. I was in love.

I awoke again and found the sperm injector dozing at my bedside. “Where are the boys?” I asked.

“In the neonatal. They’re fine. Just rest.” He pushed me down back into the bed as I tried to rise.

I attempted to glare through my fog. “Where are they?” Swinging my legs and dropping my feet to the floor, I fought through the chemical haze, pushed past the sperm injector and, grabbing my IV pole, wheeled myself towards the door.

“You should just lay down. You lost a lot of blood. Something about tearing.”

“Where are they? Which way?” I had reached the doorway and leaned against the cool metal frame, willing my legs to firm.

A small doctor approached me. I remember my five foot two inch self towered over his Korean and kind face. He said, “Miss Schmidt, lie down.” He pointed to my bed. “The babies are doing fine.”

“Where are they?” I growled.

“In the neonatal. You can see them shortly.”

“Bring them here.”

“Well, no, they are on oxygen, you can — ”

I didn’t want to hear him. His kindness infuriated me. I moved his little body, shoving him from the doorway and into the wall like a defensive tackle advancing towards the quarterback. “Where are they?” I called out as I stormed down the hall, dragging the IV pole and mentally reciting: My babies. Mine. Move, mother fucker. Move. Where are they?

Nurses scampered alongside me. The doctor scurried behind me. The sperm injector paced beside me, reaching for my arm. I shrugged him off, having long recognized his public pretense of gentle attentiveness.

Driven by instinct alone, I arrived at the neonatal unit and found my frail little guys fighting to breathe. Blackened eyes, clear-skinned, little raccoon-frogs. The IVs, taped to tongue depressors, colossal against their amphibian and bruised limbs. A little tear glistened on Twin B’s cheek. The pain, the sorrow, the fear, the scream welled up inside me.

I swallowed.

I swallowed, just like I always have. Just like when my parents fought, dodging airborne plates amid drunken retorts. Or when the family I insisted I remain with and marry the rapist-sperm injector. Or when I left my prior fiancee of six months after he disclosed he was married to another woman. Or when faceless attendants put my thirteen-year-old brother’s body in the mausoleum wall. I swallow. Hard. No time for feelings crap. Must be strong. Must handle this. And I handled it. Never shed a tear. Smiled and focused and decided and brought my healthy five-pound boys home.

Damn it.

And then… and then…

The Wave.

I had been working on healing myself. I was doing targeted emotional work with a coach and using yoga hip opening sequences. The first few sessions resulted in ripples of sorrow, leaving me on my mat crying without reason. Often yoga releases pent-up or blocked emotions, sometimes with images, often without. And I was experiencing relief.

The last day of the week of that yoga practice, I went to the hospital to see my brother, sister-in-law and their new baby. Welcome to the world, little Hudson. I cried the entire way up the elevator and released more joyful tears in the room. They brought this beautiful baby boy into the world, and my happiness for them was overwhelming. And I let it come. I let myself be open. Never believe I cannot commit dangerous mistakes.

As my sons and I left my brother and his new family, we came upon the neonatal unit. The shapes, the colors, the forms attached themselves to memories. Thoughtless, The Wave came to take me. I was nothing but feeling as the locked up emotion of a mother that almost lost her two precious babies exploded over me. I almost lost them. I stopped breathing and felt The Wave rise over my head.

I was drowning.

I sunk towards the floor, unable to hold my frame. I whispered, “Oh, my god, you almost died.” Flashes of their little limbs taped to tubes, of nurses and doctors scrambling with ventilators, of murmured phrases: we’re losing him, of the sperm injector and his pretense. The loneliness. The powerlessness. The swallowing of the boulder of fear, of violation, of exhaustion.

I cried, shaking uncontrollably, and leaned against the neonatal unit wall. I fought to verbalize the experience, wondering if anyone could hear me from the depths. “I’m fine now, but I was not then. I was not fine at all.”

The tears came and came. The Wave washed over me, took me. I let it roll me, sand and stone and coldness and salt, over and over, screams inside and out. Fear and loss and loneliness and pain. Gulping and gasping.

And it passed, leaving me exhausted in the clear blue sky and warm sunshine of my sons’ concerned gazes. A wave-swept beach of calm. As I swam to the surface, I sensed my adult sons standing beside me with expressions of concern and curiosity.

Twin A, named Kyle, said, his tone knowing, “It’s okay, Mom. We’re fine. We’re taller than you.”

Twin B, named Jordan, touched my shoulder. “You okay?”

Breathe.

They can breathe. Are breathing.

And so am I.