XB! Pear trees blooming with fragrant snow, magnolias unselfconsciously sexy,  sun competing with crisp clean breeze, children getting their feet dirty until evening falls shockingly late, birds singing all the time, etc. Windows always open.

Thank God, I only have 11 days left of working. I scrawled STAY AT HOME MOM over the square for Friday, May 16th (Venerable Theodore The Sanctified [or as I originally spelled it, "snactified."]) And then, there is no "real," leave-the-housey type job in my foreseeable future. It's a weird feeling (mostly liberating, of course.) I guess I've worked for the last 10 years of my life, or when I haven't been working, I've been looking for work. Most of those jobs since the last couple of years of college made themselves part of my identity. The nerdy glamour and glory of the lab assistant! The scruffy Zen of painting cool white vigas in the New Mexican sun! The effortless hippie chic of the dreadlocked skinny biker barista! The fervent convictions of the pious but Socratically irreverent teacher of Orthodox youths!

Now I wonder how my child will think of mommy's life before children. Will the photos and relics enchant or embarrass him? Will my aspirations appear to have been doomed from the start, or will they be evidently alive in me still? Will she resolve to "go further," or wonder why we didn't have kids sooner? Will the conversion seem contrived, or the education wasted?

There's only one way to find out!

I remember asking my parents what they used to want to be when they grew up, which question has its purpose for the young historian, but one might find it a little depressing. A few years ago, one of the little Russian kids at church asked me "Who do you want to be when you grow up?" I don't know whether to attribute it to ESL or to a poetic soul, but I liked her variation of both the tense and the interrogative pronoun (or whatever.) I hope that's what my kids will ask me.

....

am I going to be this corny from now on?