This week there’s a heated thread running through the Park Slope Parents listserv about the appropriateness of reprimanding other people’s misbehaved kids in public spaces. The thread hits a nerve, because I definitely used to be that cranky person who scowled silently when other people’s children ran reckless in a crowded restaurant or played freeze tag in the checkout line. And then something changed. My twins were born. Since their arrival, that wave of annoyance that wells up when somebody else’s child whoops it up at the very moment I crave peace has not exactly subsided, but it’s transformed. Now, instead, I get curious. I project: What will my children be like when they’re that age?

Until I had my own, I was never a kid person. I hated babysitting. I was raised sibling-free. I grew into a grown up who often found kids who weren’t related to me bothersome. In my twenties, I knew (hoped?) that I’d want a kid of my own one day, but only vaguely, the same way I thought it might be nice to have a puppy. Rarely did I think concretely about what it might be like to be pregnant, or raise a child, or be someone’s mother. There were times in recent years when I actually wondered if the ubiquitous maternal instinct would kick in when my time came, or whether it would pass me over. I knew that if I had kids I’d love them. But would I love being their mother?

As part of a generation raised to view the so-called phenomenon of abandoning hard won careers for full-time motherhood with a healthy dose of skepticism, my unease about whether motherhood would suit me also meshed with fear. Coming to late motherhood in the shadow of all those dread media stories about women opting out, part of me feared motherhood for its very lure. I wouldn’t be able to quit working once I had a child, due to financial necessity, but I wondered if I would wish I could.

Now that the twins are here (4 months old next week!), and I’m engaged in compelling work with like-minded collaborators–some of whom are themselves similarly struggling to make work fit with motherhood as well as the other way around–I’m not so worried about being tempted to abandon my other life’s work. It’s not merely financial. It’s core.

And as for my proclivity to scowl at other people’s children, and my worrying whether maternal instinct would kick in? While I don’t think I’d call this instinct, my maternal lens has come into focus since my babies arrived. To wit: On a snowy day like the one we had this week, my Brooklyn neighborhood is a cornucopia of cuteness. Kids stuffed into snowsuits slide by our apartment window, pulled by their parents on toboggans on their way to the park. Must be something about the coziness of winter and all those teeny mittens. I pass a child on the icy sidewalk holding his father’s hand and flash forward to the day when my son and my daughter will be walking by my side, each of their mittened hands holding one of my own.