Munch is asleep in her swing and there is Banana Bread is baking.
Banana Bread, incidentally, is not a pet name for my cat or anything. It's actual banana bread. I felt that I should clarify, since I make a habit of calling my daughter various food items. I'm pretty sure she things her name is Sweet Potato Pie. Poor thing will get quite a shock next Thanksgiving.
I love my life. I really do. But occasionally I look at my life and the quiet domesticity of it all, and can't help but compare it to that of my peers.
When most of my fellow '05 grads were graduating with their BA's, I was walking down the aisle.
When they began starting careers, I started trying to conceive and became a mother.
I never had the experience of going away to college. I never had that in between stage somewhere between teenager and full-blown adulthood.
That was initially a complete disappointment, by the way. In the fall before college, I was geared up to apply to Liberty University in Virginia. I had plans of scarves and hot coffee and football games in the fall, living in a dorm, being on my own, albeit slightly hidden in the safety of being at school. Not quite the same as the real world, I hear.
Anyway
I was all set to go, right up until my mother broke the news that it simply wasn't affordable. I didn't qualify for Bright Futures, and while I had a few scholarships, they weren't going to cover four years at a private university. That might have been surmountable, but then my father was deployed, leaving my mother, sister and I behind, and leaving me with a great sense of responsibility to them. Moving to Virginia just wasn't in the cards.
So I went to the local community college, got a job and started life. Met my husband. Nagged him into marrying me. Finally go my AA. Had a baby. Not the way I expected it to go. Not the way the lives of so many friends went.
I sometimes
You don't get to know what I sometimes, because at this point, Munch woke up and nursed, then proceeded to giggle and play and be all-around charming until I snapped out of wishing for anything but the life I've been given. Because really, how could you not love this:
