How are you?

Sixty days. The longest-shortest 60 days ever.

We have been overwhelmed with love and support. People have come out of the woodwork with support and messages of care. It’s been humbling, and you all have become the cornerstone that keeps our little house standing. For that, we can’t thank you enough.

If you have ever called or asked us “How are the girls? How are you?” and we answer “I’m good. They’re good,” and then we sort of trail off… don’t take offense, and don’t think we are hiding things - that is just all we have to say at that moment. It’s not that we don’t want to share everything, or that we are struggling, or that anything is wrong (though it might be). It’s just exhausting. Talking is exhausting. We don’t have the “mental calories”.

When I look at my girls, I see them now, I see them the day they were born, I see them graduating college (if they want to go.) I have so many thoughts and things I’d love to share, but to think those thoughts is really, really hard considering I have to go to a hospital, pass a safety and health check, scrub in, and wipe everything down with alcohol before I can even look at my girls.

People ask us for our real thoughts, our real feelings, for the real-real. The honest truth is we don’t want to share the real-real. Not because we don’t want to share, but because if we shared that all the time, we’d be a mess. More often then not, Laurel and I will sit at dinner and not talk much - the first thing we mention is how nice it is to NOT have to talk. We are not avoiding the hard subjects, we face them head-on every day, but we have to do so with a clear head and optimism in our head and heart.

We love that everyone genuinely wants to know how we (the entire family) are doing. We love that you want us to share our thoughts and updates, but if you call or ask and we are short with you, or seem down on something, don’t read too much into that.

Laurel and I save the real-real for each other. Sometimes it all comes out in restaurants, or a coffee shop, or in the car. One or both of us will become a complete mess. So for the most part we try to control the controllable, focus on the the long term goals, and the fact that our two beautiful girls are making good progress. But the mess behind the scenes, the ugly cries, the sentences we can’t get through…those we have to compartmentalize.

This was a rambling way to say - if you ask us about the girls and we are short, or if we ask you to read the blog, it’s not because we don’t want to talk to you about the real-real, it’s just because we’d rather not (talk at all).

I understand that this is a champagne problem, that this is “a people are just trying to help” problem, that this is a “people love us” problem… we’re so lucky to have this “problem”. But as much as I would love to talk through this with all of you, but I just don’t have the emotional bandwidth.

I write this to say thank you! And to ask you to be patient with us when we are not talkative, and to ask that if we don’t offer the real-real, to take a look at this blog because it might be here.

So all-in-all, I’m good. They’re good. We’re good.

We can’t wait for the little monsters to invade our space and take over our daily lives in a new way!

~ Berto