I was rooting around in my hope chest today, looking for some inspiration. I found so many things. Not the least of which was an old journal I wrote for a college class in 1999. On the very first page is an ineloquent diatribe about the senselessness of separating mother and baby after birth. I didn't read the rest, and I have no idea why, at 17, (2 years before I found that book in the library that supposedly inspired me to midwifery) I was writing about the motherbaby bond.
Nevertheless, there it is. Apparently, my obsession with birth has already gone on more than ten years now. Did I mention I finally took the plunge, admitted to myself that I really do want to go back to midwifery, even though it's terrifying, even though it will probably be another ten years before I finally make it? No? Everything is terrifying now. I'm so dramatic.
Andrei's decided he has his own career he wants to pursue now, after his retirement in a year and a half: teaching elementary school. We're a couple of money-makers, aren't we? I was hoping he'd find something that would at least allow us to make the same amount of money we do now, not less. But I was hoping even more that he would genuinely find something to do that he really loved, that was meant for him. And I just wasn't sure that was it.
But he found something in the hope chest, too: an ad for a dating website (answered by yours truly, I might add), circa 2003, in which he claimed he wanted to be a teacher and work with kids. Now, as much as I'd been longing for some certainty, something solid to carry us through this scary transition, this rite of passage, it seems like we've found it, in the form of messages from our former selves, each singing the same tune even from beyond that whole shaking-the-boat rite of passage, having children.
