Eight Months Ago

I heard her fidgeting a bit too much.  That's how I knew she was awake.  I left my starting-a-new-blog-for-the-(gasp!)-first-time-ever investigation to talk with my oldest daughter.

If this had been eight months ago, I would have stormed in, fussing, roaring: "It's after ten o'clock!  You should be asleep!  Go to sleep RIGHT NOW!"  If this had been eight months ago, I'd already have been exhausted from a full day of teaching and an evening of taking classes toward my next degree.  I'd have been trying to figure out how to make my last ten dollars stretch for the two weeks until payday.  I'd have been swirling in what more than one past lover has told me is my own personal vortex of negative energy, thinking that this working-PhDing-single-mother-of-four shit is the worst, mainly because there seemed to be no alternative.  Thinking that maybe being dead would be better than living, 'cause living was too hard.

If this had been eight months ago.

Tonight, I went into her room and just talked with her.  We discussed her friends at school, the class bully, the colleges she wants to attend, future job prospects.  She is such a contemplativeworrierpeoplepleaser, just like her Mama.  She needs time to think, to say what she needs to say.  She has borne witness to the fact that if there was one thing I never seemed to have, it was time.  I want her to know that I have it now.

At the end of this summer, it'll be time for her to go to middle school and me to go back to teaching.

But we will not.

Am I worried about making ends meet?  Hell, yes.  Am I going to have to do some hustling to pay the bills?  Probably.  Will I have bouts of exhaustion, helplessness, hopelessness as I try to unplug myself and my children from financial and educational systems that seek to chew us up and spit us out? For sure.

But I was worried and hustling and exhausted and helpless and hopeless when I was working all day and just wanting to be around my children, to watch them learn, to help them grow.   So why not trade in full days with other people's children for full days with my own?

We will have our time.  And I want the whole world to bear witness.