What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up?

I often think about this very topic late at night when all of my boys are asleep (2 cats, 1 baby, 1 husband, for those new to this place.) Have I fulfilled my childhood dream? Do I know what I want to be when I grow up? Wait, am I a grown up already?

Personally, the question should be more along the lines of what the hell was my childhood dream? Because I? Was a chameleon. I changed with my every surrounding, not to mention mood. If the sun was aligned with the earth on the third Saturday in October, I wanted to be a princess. Sunday, it could have very well been an astronaut. (Actually, I did want to be an astronaut at one point. Blame it on a childhood fave movie, Space Camp.) I had the brief ballerina phase that a lot of girls my age went through, but that phased out shortly after I was ready to be a veterinarian. I like animals.

I think somewhere in middle school I realized vets put animals to sleep, so I decided that if I was going to be a vet, I would be the kind that didn't do that, because in my mind all animals would live and be happy and I would heal them. Then, you know, you find out Santa isn't real (shut up, I was a late bloomer. I found out at the end of 5th grade. My mother had to tell me....but only after I got in trouble for not cleaning my room. Way to kick a kid while she's down!) and start to grow up and those sorts of ideas aren't really real.

And then I wanted to be a writer. In fact, I'm pretty sure I threw that in a few times as I changed my mind profusely, to strive to write. I always enjoyed a good story. I loved to read. Writing made reading happen. I wanted it. I dreamed of it.

So I wrote stories. I remember in the 5th grade (you know, the same year I found out Santa wasn't real and that unicorns did not, in fact, exist) taking some sort of writing test in which we had to create a story. At least, I think I'm remembering this correctly, it was some sort of fictional writing thing. I wrote about a family adopting some creature, probably because I watched Harry and the Henderson's one too many times, but I vaguely remember this story pouring out of me quicker than butter rolling off a hot biscuit and thinking "yes, yes! THIS is a good story!" and then I was all too bummed when our time was up and we had to finish.

My teacher was so proud of my story, and apparently I did very well. It was then that I decided to fulfill my dream of being a writer.

Middle school came and went. Not much writing happened.

Then high school happened, and oh, what teenager doesn't go through the dark, emo stage and writes profusely in her journal? While it was not Pulitzer Prize winning material, I wrote a lot, so much that I was sent on a young author's conference and yes, yes I was going to be a writer.

And then I went to college. I really hated all those literature classes. I cut my hair short, dyed it black, smoked a lot of cigarettes and hung out with a cool professor and hosted a poetry radio show with him. I was the cliched beatnik Keuroac-ian everyone made fun of. Except I was cool.

I fell in love. I got engaged. I broke up with that guy. I met another guy. I started an MAW program (Masters of Arts in Writing). I started a tech editing job. I stopped the MAW program. I fell in love with the other guy. I got engaged. I adopted two cats. I got married. I left my job. I started a business. I folded the business. I started freelancing. I got pregnant. I became a mother.

Somewhere in between all of that, I wrote a lot of stuff, but around the time of starting the tech editing job and starting/folding a business and freelancing, I stopped writing. Sure, I get paid to write tech stuff, but it's not really the writer I expected myself to be.

I think in my head I was going to write about pirates or adventures or something. Something epic. The problem is the amount of writing I had actually done never amounted to a finished piece. I had a lot of good starts, but I never had the fin. The end. The closure. To this day, I have a young adult/kids piece sitting in a box of other unfinished pieces that's just waiting to be written and finished. In fact, it did well when I started it, at least the group I was working with at the time said it was something worth continuing.

Somewhere in my head, I had thought, much like my childhood, I was supposed to just change and move onto the next thing. Except I was no longer in the 5th grade and all of a sudden I was a grown up. I had grown up but I was still......not what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Until I had my son.

In between the in between all of that stuff and unfinished pieces, I grew up to be a mother.

In fact, I remember thinking the moment my son came screaming into the world, ah, this? Is the best thing I could have done. And when they brought his little face over to mine for a kiss from his mommy, I told him right then and there

You are better than any story I could ever write. You're the best thing I can ever do.

And so, I suppose all I really want is to be a mom when I grow up. This is one project I don't ever plan to finish, but rather write continuously, for however long God lets me.