I was somewhere on the Annapurna Circuit when the world began to close.

Nepal in early 2020 was still itself, ancient and unhurried, the kind of place that makes everything else feel very far away. I had been planning that trek for a long time. And then, quietly at first and then all at once, the pandemic arrived, and I had to come home.

I did not know it yet, but that interruption was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

A phone call from an old friend

Shortly after I returned, a dear client reached out. She wanted to know if I had anything lined up, because she might have something remarkable for me. She passed along the contact of a young couple from New York City who had fled to the safety of family in Oklahoma City ahead of the pandemic.

She was pregnant with twins. And she had just gone into early labor.

I packed my bags and went.

Three months in Oklahoma City

The twins were born premature and spent their first week in the NICU before coming home to their grandparents' house. What followed was three months of the kind of closeness that only a pandemic makes possible. No restaurants, no distractions, no leaving unless necessary. Just one warm household, two tiny babies, and the slow, extraordinary business of helping them find their place in the world.

They were the first family I had been with who were younger than me. I am not getting any younger, so that detail surprised me more than I expected. And yet watching them, two young people discovering themselves as parents in real time, rising to meet every challenge with more grace than most people manage in a lifetime, was one of the most quietly beautiful things I have witnessed in this work. They were exactly the parents those boys needed.

There was something different about the dynamic, something warmer and more reciprocal. They were not just a family I was caring for. They were curious, generous, and open in a way that made space for something real to grow between us. They taught me things too, about ease, about joy, about what it looks like to face an impossible year with genuine grace.

The twins thrived. By sixteen weeks, adjusted for their early arrival, both boys were sleeping through the night without a pacifier, without a single cry-it-out night. Their pediatrician was quietly amazed at each visit.

From Oklahoma City to New York City

When the worst of the pandemic eased, the family made their way back to New York City. And they brought me with them.

That second chapter felt like its own story entirely. From the grandparents' house in Oklahoma to a Manhattan apartment, from a city holding its breath to one slowly coming back to life. We ran in Central Park while the boys grew. We watched them discover everything: first foods, first sounds, first wobbly attempts at the world. I was there for all of it, not as staff, but as someone who had become part of the fabric of that family.

The boys turned one year old in New York City. It felt like a milestone for all of us.

What that year gave me

I have been with many families over the years, and I carry something from each of them. But that particular year sits differently in me.

It reminded me why I do this. Not for the clinical outcomes, though those matter. But for the moments that do not appear in any document: watching two small humans discover the world for the first time, day after day, while outside the world itself was holding its breath.

They wrote afterward that they were lucky beyond belief to have found me. I have always felt it was the other way around.

We talk on a weekly basis and visit whenever we can make it work. The twins are growing up fast. And somewhere in Nepal, the Annapurna Circuit is still waiting.