Thoughts behind the wheel of a large automobile

I was driving Lily home from her first orthodontist appointment this week when I had a weird out-of-body experience. It was as if I were just removed from myself. Maybe a little up and to the right.

“Oh my god,” I thought. “I’m the mom driving my kid home from the orthodontist appointment in the minivan.”

It was like a lightening bolt, EUREKA! moment. Only, instead of making some amazing discovery or solving some unsolvable problem I was suddenly aware of my reality. One in which I’d entered into this very specific, very mundane phase of life.

The song “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads played in my subconscious.

“And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile … and you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”

That’s a rhetorical question of course. I know how I got here. The 10-year-old in the back seat fussing about her new spacers. The large automobile Brad celebrates annually on what he calls our “vanniversary.” The paint stain on my fleece coat. The upcoming fight over piano practice and the toothpaste spit on the bathroom mirror.

All these microcosmic realities created from a series of large and small choices made over decades. I could retrace each of the steps to this moment more or less and still am not sure I would’ve made any more sense of it.

I know I’m not making any sense. Here’s the thing, I don’t feel like my idea of “mom in the minivan driving the tween home from the orthodontist.” Like, there’s a vision I conjure up of that mom in the minivan and that vision is not me.

And yet, it is me. Which must mean I am wrong about my vision of the minivan driving mom, or else wrong about my vision of myself.

Most likely it is both. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it a thing? Or is this just an overdramatic existential crisis? Am I going crazy? (That last question is rhetorical).

It’s not that I want to turn back time. (How many more references to hits of the ’80s can I make in one post?). I have a great partner in life. These amazing, ridiculous kids who spend most of the day either talking about farts or pretending to be cats. I have this beautiful house with a cherry tree out front that will bloom in just a couple months. During these long months of quarantine, I’ve never felt lonely or bored.

Life is full.

There’s a fullness to it.

A richness I never could have anticipated, understood or appreciated properly when I was younger. We’ve built our own ecosystem with all these interlocking parts. In the beginning, it was just Brad and me, a couple of cats, and a mishmash of borrowed furniture and mismatched flatware. And now? Now it’s Brad and me and a couple of cats and a dog and three kids and a couple of tired sofas and a stacks of mostly matching (thought also chipped) flatware. This intricate web of memories and routines and the things you always say and the things you never say. All of this sort of folds into itself and the days go by.

Right up to this moment in the minivan. Where I was both out of my body and fully in it.

I think so often mothers, well fathers, too probably, get entrenched in the day-to-day of … what? Raising a family? Nurturing it? Growing it? Surviving? Battling? What’s the right verb? It feels like more than an act of propagation and husbandry. But maybe that’s just because humans have made a bigger meal of it than necessary. Either way, it’s this consuming thing. Once you’re in it, it’s not as if you get to poke your head out of the water to realize you’re actually submerged in a vast, rolling expanse. You just keep swimming. Making the oatmeal, braiding the hair, stowing the toys, cleaning the litter box.

On the way home from the orthodontist though, I periscoped. I peeked around and saw the water all around me. Touching all the horizons. “I’m in the middle,” I thought. This point right here. This ordinary little task of driving the tween, who sits in the back seat moaning in discomfort fretting overhead expanders and head gear.

I. Am. In. It.

And in that moment it felt less like the result of a series of choices. And more like I’d always been floating. I’ve always just been carried from one thing to the next, assuming agency. I have always been this person of currents. Never the person swimming against the currents.

My favorite thing to do in an ocean is to jump into the waves. The feeling of the water slipping past me, not thrusting me to shore. The illusion of staying in one place, but actually always drifting down the shoreline. Each dive in is a choice I make. But the medium is always quietly at work on me.

My years at home, freelancing while caring for Lily and Jovie feels like a distant past, though it was only five years ago. It’s so different now. Even after having Annie. That year I spent at home with her as an infant, I knew was precious. And I savored it. But I also knew I wasn’t going to be the same mom I’d been. I wasn’t going to stay at home with her, hosting weekly playdates and writing marketing blogs during naps. I was burned out and uninspired as a freelance writer. And I missed the camaraderie of a workplace. Having an identity outside of motherhood.

The currents swept me toward substitute teaching. That and my curiosity about what it would be like working in a school. Chance swept me into middle school. And diving into the waves, I stayed there. My curiosity about teaching turned into a job supporting teachers. And now that job is evolving, too. Two weeks ago I started a graduate school cohort. My plan is to pursue a Master’s in Special Education. In the near(ish) future, I could go from someone who supports teachers, to being a teacher myself. This career switch, or life switch, or whatever, feels like both a series of small choices and as if I’m being carried along by the water.

I haven’t talked about it much because, frankly, it feels terrifying and a little absurd. What business do I have in education? What do I have to offer students? Friends and co-workers tell me I’ll be great at it. But what if I’m not? What if it’s a horrible decision? What if I permanently scar all the impressionable young minds?What if my heart can’t sustain the dedication required to do the job well? What if I hate it? What if I fail?

I haven’t talked about it much, also, because it feels as if by choosing to teach, I’m abandoning another dream.

Being a writer has always been this thing I cling to. This piece of my identity. And in starting my job as an instructional assistant and then going to school for a Master’s, it feel as if I’ve placed a dream in a shoebox and shoved it in the back of a closet. It’s a little embarrassing. And I’m a little ashamed. It feels a little bit like giving up. Who did I think I was, anyway?

I’m sharing all these thoughts and feelings because they exist in me. And sharing is what I’ve always tried to do here.

I need to acknowledge, also, that I will always write. And so I will always be a writer. I can’t not write almost as surely as I can’t not breathe. In fact, I love it more now that it’s not a job. That I don’t have to write about office furniture or experts on data management. That I can reflect on what it means to be a special educator in grad school papers and reflect on what it means to be human in poetry.

That I get paid for it. Or that I am recognized for it. That it is known. That is another beast entirely. That’s what gets put in the shoebox.

My sister and I were texting today. She was talking about feeling, in life, that she’s in this hall of doors. And she worries that she won’t know which door to open or when. I maintain that she’ll know the door. And she’ll know the time when it’s time.

The beauty of being in the middle of the vast expanse is the vastness it can open up inside a person. How you can surface and bob around and see all the possibility. That I’ve always been surrounded by doors. That a life is filled with them. Doors that will stay stubbornly closed. Doors that you will peek into and close quietly. Doors that you will slam behind you. Doors that you will open up and walk into.

What’s behind any one of them, what brought you to them, all a result of both a series of choices and the currents we swim in, always carrying us, always delivering us to that next place.

I’m walking through this next door with equal parts trepidation and peace. It feels like the next right thing. It feels like the right place and the right time. The terror will work itself out in the doing.

This life has gifted me with so many identities. Daughter, sister, soccer player, yogi, reader, writer, journalist, mother.

And now educator.

As I’m floating down this current in my minivan, orthodontist appointments, two and a half years of grad school classes, potty training and my first year of teaching on the horizon, I think to myself, maybe it doesn’t matter how I got here. Whether I chose it or drifted into it.

I’m here. And I’m ready to jump into the next wave.