It occurred to me today that it’s February. I’m still trying to mentally adjust to the new year, it always takes a few months to reorient the calendar in my head. But it’s February already. One month until Devin’s birthday. I can already feel things lurking.

I am happy, absolutely. Joyous. I feel like I’ve been given a new life to live. At the same time, though, I feel like little things poke holes, casting fishhooks in through the light and yanking out a big globular shadow. Then the moment passes, the hook falls out and the shadow gets sucked back under again. But it’s still there.

Empathy. I feel a lot of empathy. I’ve always been a caring, sensitive person, but now I don’t just feel bad for other people, I feel it myself too. Less “Wow that’s terrible” and more “I know how that feels and I never, ever want to feel it again.”

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I don’t know why eyes are so important to me. Maybe because I always pictured Devin with blue eyes. Kate’s are looking more and more brown and it makes me sad – not because I don’t like brown, but because I wanted them to be blue, I wanted them to be like I pictured Devin’s.

Every time we go over to see the twins, the cousins, I study their eyes, too. Their big sister’s are brown, so for a long time it was just a curiosity. Now they are going more and more blue. It hit me hard. They got boys, and now boys with blue eyes. It’s not fair. (It will never be fair.)

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I see friends talk about how different their children are and it reminds me that we really have no idea who Devin would have been. I forget, sometimes, because Kate looked so similar to him when she was born. They were both small-side-of-average babies, her being 7lbs at birth and him being on track for the same. When I look at her I see him, too. She’s still so petite, 20th percentile in height and weight. I see friends with small girls and big chubby boy babies and I wonder, would that have been him? In my head he’s a petite boy like his sister, but would he have been a roly-poly one? Would he be racing through baby clothes sizes?

I know Kate. I know she’s spunky and outgoing. She plays well independently but always checks in for cuddles. She likes to screech and doesn’t babble. She hated laying down as a newborn and is determined to figure out walking.

I always felt like Devin was shy. Active, but reserved. Sometimes I get these pictures in my mind of what I think he would look like, act like – but they’re blurry. They’re made-up. How I wish I had a crystal ball.

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We’ve been talking about when we go back to do IVF again, talking about this hypothetical sibling for Kate. We really want to have another, but at the same time Kate fills me up so completely with love and joy I know I would be okay if we never could. But at the same time the thought leaves such a pang – not just because we want Kate to have a sibling to grow up with, but that she should already have a sibling to grow up with.

I’m supposed to have two children, damnit. I’m supposed to have two.