Today, Beyonce took to social media to announce that she and Jay-Z are expecting twins, and I cannot imagine why my husband and I did not do this exact same thing when we had ours.
Caressing her growing belly while draped a green veil, kneeling by a fecund eruption of nature’s bounty, is just so Beyonce. It is exactly how I would have dreamed she would mark this kind of milestone. I think one reason so many people thought she faked her last one and used a secret surrogate is that we ALL expected Bey to commission artwork of herself looking basically exactly like this, and it seemed suspicious when it never happened — and indeed, this photo says so many things, but none as loudly as, “DO NOT EVEN TRY TO START RUMORS THAT I AM FAKING THIS ONE, YOU BIG JERKS.” (Twitter en masse pointed out that the fact it’s on the first day of Black History Month feels extra pointed, and planned, and uber-Bey. She is just fully marinating in her own Beyonceness right now. It’s tremendous. And that’s coming from someone who is probably on one of the first 10 pages of The Beyhive’s Burn Book.) One thing I think IS indisputable from coverage of her over the years is that she loves being a mom and ached for more kids. How lovely to open February, then, with some joy.
Congratulations, Carters! I am really happy for y’all. Twins are enormously fun. Make all your friends bring you food, Diet Cokes, diapers, and spare burp cloths when you burn through them faster than your machine can clean them. (Kim and Kanye will send mink-trimmed ones, I assume.) Be careful about letting Jay-Z take a nap while you hold them both in your lap, because one of them MIGHT start crying and then barf on the other one, and you MIGHT not be sure how to move them both safely so you can tend to the mess and to the screaming, and that MIGHT end in you kinda folding them together into a baby-barf taco while you use one finger to dial Jay-Z and wake him up. I mean, just in case.
And then just sit back and watch them grow and learn to roll over each other and maybe sometimes chewing on each other’s shoulders while staring pensively off in middle distance. Bask in them becoming each other’s best friends, and cry a little when you realize they won’t go off to their respective school classrooms without give each other a hug and a goodbye kiss on the cheek, and then own up to the fact that you’re going to spend a lot of the next two decades sitting at home in the dark playing “Sunrise, Sunset,” and weeping. It’s going to be great.
