8

November 1st.  It's usually sitting somewhere in the back of my head that day.  A lingering thought, maybe mentioned in passing or maybe not whispered at all.  November 1st, the day that I started running a child care, more importantly to me, the day that I started staying home with my son.

How did I celebrate this passing, 8 years later?  By not remembering it all. 

It happened and I didn't notice; I just kept plugging away, scrubbing the dried ketchup off the table and sweeping up the graham cracker dust.  I only remembered it a week later when I was sticking a sticker on the 'real' calendar after one of Wyatt's gymnastic classes.

It's been eight years.

At finally remembering this date, as always, I start to get bored and daydreamy, thinking about just how 'green the grass on the other side' might be.

And there's a point when I told myself that I would go back to work, 'Probably when Edy starts preschool' I declared looking at her in the infant carrier.  It seemed like that would be forever, that somehow I would have my 'fill' of her by then.

Then I was invited to an open house, for preschool, for the one that I would need to sign Edy up for in the next few months... if I were to continue to stay home.

The clash of 'I'm bored with my life' and the self-declaration of preschool being the end has pounded at my heart.

Followed by so, so many questions,..

ones that I'm not sure I'm ready to find answer to.