I was feeling much better about everything. My MIL stayed with me for a week, we had a very nice visit, D4 had a great birthday and I was even able to finish some long delayed plumbing projects around the house (I did a couple and hired someone for the others).
Then this morning, since my MIL was there to help the girls get ready for school, I tried to leave a little early. As I started to pull out of the driveway, D7 showed up at the front door crying for me. So I pulled back in and held her on my lap for 10 minutes until the weepies stopped. I suppose some of this could be normal kids stuff, but these episodes are pretty frequent and it seems pretty probable that she has some anxiety that I'm going to disappear like her Dad did. And I can't really do anything about it, other than show up and be there every day, which I do. Hopefully she will eventually trust in that.
After I got to work, I kept thinking about when they were newborns, and how I felt I would move mountains for those little wrinkly, precious bundles. Now the main underpinning of their existence has been yanked away and there is nothing I can do except to focus on building a new one.
