Years ago, sometime between the birth of the Adorable Girl and the arrival of her spunky little brother, I sat in my therapist's office talking about what I wanted my life to look like, someday. I was (am) struggling with a depression that had followed me around for -- if I'm being honest -- most of my life. But the years after becoming a parent were particularly tricky for me to handle. I'd have good years and bad, easy days and not so easy -- and very few people in my life knew about any of it.
My therapist -- a beautiful, 50ish woman with three grown children and a lifetime of experiences behind her kind smile -- knew about it all, the ugly and uglier. I had started seeing her four months after Annie was born and would continue to see her off and on -- sometimes every week, sometimes going years between meetings -- until around the time we left Virginia.
At this particular session, I remember talking about what an ideal life might look like for me, what I wanted my everyday to one day be. At the time, I had a toddler, a husband (of course :) and a full-time career in a busy, stressful office. I loved the people I worked with, but didn't feel much of a sense of community outside work. We didn't have many other parent friends or family close enough to see without driving a distance. I felt like we were doing life alone, and just barely making it work.
In my ideal life, I told my counselor, I would be outside as much as possible. I would walk to work after walking my kids to daycare or school. And when the school day ended, I would be right there to pick them up and walk them home again. We'd have close friends close by, and my kids would be surrounded by a loving community of people to help raise and support them through life.
Saying this out loud helped me figure out what steps I could take to make our life in Virginia match up more to the ideal I had in mind. I worked really hard in the years that followed to create that community. Neighbors, nannies, teachers, work friends, other parents -- anybody that had any role in our life was loved and welcomed into our makeshift "hometown." And it helped. These relationships made our life in Virginia happy and continue to be incredibly special to all of us.
But the conflict between our careers and what we wanted for our kids ramped up, becoming more difficult to manage as the years went on. You know the rest of the story, how, eventually, this friction led to our family's wish to move out of the Washington, D.C. area and landed us, amazingly, halfway around the world. But what you don't know is how much my life today looks like that vision I shared with my counselor all those years ago.
In February, the Adorables' school newsletter advertised a job opening for a teacher's aide. The pay was meager but the schedule great, perfectly aligned with the kids' school days and holidays. I interviewed for the job, knowing that my complete lack of teaching experience would probably not help. But I got it -- and for the last few months, I've been walking (or driving, we're often running late ;) my kids to school, dropping them off at their classes and then walking a few feet away from the boy's classroom to my "work."
My job consists of pulling small groups of kids -- 2 or 3 at a time -- out of class to work on things like reading, spelling and math. I try to make it fun and have found such joy in coming up with creative ways to help them learn and watching their progress. I love the kids I work with, and I just hope I'm doing some good.
In addition to that work, I spend an hour and a half every day with my very special buddy, an amazing little boy with behavioral issues who can't stay in the classroom all day yet. He and I learn through play, making up pretend games at the playground, "calling" his favorite Zimbabwean singers and Beyonce on the "telephone." I love my time with him -- and the fact that I get paid to act like a kid for an hour and a half every day. :)
I see the Adorables and their friends throughout the school day. The girl tries to hide so I don't embarrass her, but the boy will yell out his classroom door "Over here!" and wave anytime I walk by. He runs and peers in the window to my office at morning tea and lunch breaks to tell me how his day is going. It's pretty much the sweetest thing ever, and almost makes up for all the times he drives me crazy asking if he can buy a new tablet game. ;)
When I first started working at the school, I felt way out of my element and really anxious about doing a good job. "I should have just gone back to what I know," I told myself, working in media, writing and editing for a big company, sitting in a cubicle all day. I was scared to being doing something new, scared I was going to fail and, worse, fail the kids in my charge.
But then I remembered that conversation I had all those years ago that day in my therapist's office in Virginia. I remember being so far from happy at the time, straining to see a way forward to make life more joyful. And I realized, I did it. I'm here. I made that vision come true. I don't need to waste this moment being scared, I thought. I'm just going to enjoy it.
And I have. I really, really have. :)
I have enough years behind my smile now to know that life will change again and this "ideal" won't last forever, that our vision for our family will continue to shift and grow as we do.
But right now I'm sitting in this moment with the realization that life is long and everything changes -- and when life goes your way for once, you best embrace it.
