Back to Work

It happened kind of quietly, today. I slipped back into the stream of it almost seamlessly, though the slightest bit of recognition peeked at me over my coffee mug and then popped up once again, in the parking lot at lunch.

On my lunch break.

The first lunch break of a full-time working day in a very long time.

When I started this blog, I was a sweet young thing of 28 with a newborn baby girl and a lot of questions. I rode those questions like a wave, and at one point they washed over me, but somehow I stayed afloat and landed back again, here. In a library. Exactly the sort of place that welcomes seekers in, invites them to shake off their umbrellas, and sit a spell.

Oh, sweet children of mine. I yelled at you when I got home, since you'd pestered your father to death all the hot summer day and dumped every toy you owned all over every room. I'd spent so much of myself at work that I'd forgotten to save a sliver of sweetness for you, like the last precious piece of watermelon juicing up the plate. I'll get better at that, I promise. I need this job, and you don't realize it yet, but you need this job too, since it represents the ability for your parents to live a little less close to panic when paying the bills and a little bit further towards paino lessons. Savings. Security. I also need this job because I believe in this job, and I think I can be good at it, and I feel like an instrument snapped back into tune after years and years of being just a little too sharp.

I put you both to bed tonight with the blankets you've had since birth, your own swaths of security, a little crusty with hummus or jelly or (probably) snot. I really should wash them for you, you 8 year old and 6 year old.

The newborn at the start of this blog is now 8. Her brother is 6 and will be starting kindergarten. I am almost 38. Almost ten years of my life are wrapped up in these pixels.

I wouldn't trade a single second of them.