in another life

This isn’t a WWYLLLI post, but I’ll post it under that category anyway, since it fits. It’s really a longing for something I don’t have and maybe did want.

Today I’m sitting on the big exercise ball bouncing my six week old son (wrapped up in a carrier on my chest) and looking at a sewing pattern. In the instructions for this cap-sleeved, A-line nursing dress or tunic, I’m reading “includes a special section for alterations for use in pregnancy” and I have a longing moment for more children that is almost palpable. I can’t tell my husband this. Truly that time is over. I’ll be 41 in two months. We have a 4 bedroom house that’s full (especially if I work from home). But I think of another life – in which I chose to have children – and was able to – at, say 30, and had, say 3 or 4 children (!) The life of a crafty, fashionista, stay-at-home-and-homeschool mother. Maybe part time designer (yes, probably), definitely craftista business owner. Having more children. I know, I know, I can barely care for myself right now, let alone a third or fourth child.

And I should not be thinking this at all. That’s why it’s here, to just get the thoughts out there, to just express them so they don’t haunt me. Yes, I was warned, by friends, by my grandmother Aimee (my grandmother Ann said “never have children, they’ll make you miserable”), by my cousins. But, you know I have made my own choices and have been glad of them.

There are lots of reasons why this doesn’t work – for instance, travel to Europe would probably be out. The bike trip across France would be out. Montessori, scratch that. Heck, even affording college (and retirement) would be challenging. And I do love to work. I love my clients.

So how do I carve out sort of this life right now. First off, I can’t work full time again. Not right now. This has slowly been the dynamic that’s been changing in my life. God said, okay, I’ll give you another child. And then he said, okay, I’ll make it easy, your partners want to leave the business. I’ll give you a sucky year that you’ll reconsider your work life. And then he is saying “okay, now it’s time, I’ve shown you this path, it’s time for you to take heed of these things I’m sending and do them”. So I take this morning’s feelings, the strong, overpowering feelings that my life must change and I must try to do them in some form or another.

I need to start articulating what that looks like so I may manifest it in my life. But it’s still fuzzy around the edges a bit, and I have to work on that vision a bit more.

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