For a while I've had this friend.  I'll call her Nikki (because that's her name).   As long as I've known her she's been a mom, and for the first five years or so that I knew her, she was a stay-at-home mom.  When we met, I wasn't married and kids were somewhere ahead of me on the horizon but not yet in view.  I am fairly certain that when we met, I did not ask her any questions that were not about her family.  And then, I'm also fairly certain, I continued to do this for the next five or so years.

Once she decided to go back to work, I felt freedom to ask questions.  We could talk freely.  It occurred to me that the reason I didn't ask her any questions was because I didn't know how.  I didn't know how to say "What did you do before?" without making some sort of implication that she was now doing nothing.  Or that I was focused on the wrong things.  So I asked nothing.  

I felt slightly ashamed, somewhere in the back of my mind, until the prospect of becoming a stay-at-home mother became real to me.  Not long before we left Maryland, I blurted out, "I'm sorry I never asked you any questions. It's about to happen to me, and I know it's going to suck and that it must have for you.  And I'm sorry."  

A woman my mom's age approached me on my last Sunday at our home church in Maryland.  "You have to find a MOPS group," she said.  And also, this:  "You have to come up with an answer for when people ask you what you do.  Other than being a stay-at-home mom.  Because when that's your answer, the conversation stops."   I told her I had a business that I would eventually, hopefully, be spending some time on.  "That's good, go with that."  

Friends, hear me.  I love my children.  I adore being their mother.  I find myself delighting in things I never would have imagined-- in the doing, in the listening, in the witnessing. I do feel I am learning to embrace my role and this time.  I am often honored and humbled. But I've never been keen on my role as mother completely defining me.  Why should I have to stop being all the things I was before?  

Nearly five years into my motherhood journey, I am very aware that I haven't stopped being most of the things I was before. The difference I think, as a stay-at-home mom, is that often no one seems to care.  Either because they thought they knew all they needed to know or because, like me, they didn't know how to phrase it, in the two months since I last worked, no one I've met has asked me any questions that weren't related to my husband or children or non-work-or-college-related past.  

Then I went to MOPS.  Kicking and screaming.  I felt that an organization called Mothers of Preschoolers was bound to corner me farther into the pigeonhole of motherhood.  I thought we would have nothing other than children in common; I thought they would make me decorate cakes (which I have totally done on my own; I don't know why I was so offended by this possibility). And I was wrong.  (Husband?  You reading this? You might want to print it out for future reference.)  

For the first time since coming home, someone asked me what I did before-- they asked everyone.  In that room, with those women, we were all whole people with multidimensional lives.  We were all slightly disoriented, complex people who are also mothers.  I was so grateful to be seen.   I told Daniel all about it on the phone that afternoon, how I'd been wrong, how my hopes were high, how happy I was to have been....acknowledged.  

Then the next day, talking to another mom about our kids, I was asked another question.  

"So your daughter goes to school Tuesdays and Thursdays.  What do you do on the other days?"  

I stammered.  My eyes grew wide.  And I never actually answered the question.    Huh.  Not sure which is worse.

This evening while I put groceries away and cooked dinner, I told the girls they could watch a show. It was Emerie's turn to choose.  "Mickey Mouse!" she exclaimed, referring to the terrible Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  It is one of my very least favorite kid shows.  I have no idea what its appeal is; it makes no sense.   

Mirabella replied, "Mommy, if she chooses Dora or Mickey Mouse or one of those little kid shows, I won't even watch it."  

Not sure when that happened.  It was literally a week ago when they were both clamoring to watch it.  And now it's too "little kid."   Which brings me to a topic I've had occasion to think on a bit lately: The incremental process of letting our kids go.  

I have always dreaded the start of school even though, as a student, I really liked it and haven't had any affiliation with schooling for some time (aside from my halted attempt at post-graduate work pre kids). It occurred to me that this will be the last year we are mostly unaffected by "back to school," since our eldest child goes to preschool just two days per week now.  Still, we had to go shopping for a few items, had to attend parent orientation and a school work day.  It is now not unusual to have a conversation start with, "Hey, are you Mirabella's mom?" 

I feel like just yesterday we were agonizing over her name.  Was it too long?  Would she be able to say it?  And spell it?  Was it too different?  Now she's in a class of 18 that includes a Bella, Anabella, and Ella. There is so much artwork littering our house with 'Mirabella' scrawled across the top that I don't know what to do with it all.  I remember, back then, trying to envision her name on a prescription bottle, on a cubby hole or a nametag, on handmade cards in crayon.  Now it's all here, everywhere I turn, and it came in the blink of an eye.  Which must also mean that, just like that, it will be gone.  

One of the rules at Mirabella's school is that the teachers will not do for a child what that child wants to do for herself. We have been trying to follow that one at home.  Sometimes it's so easy to limit our kids to what they've done before, what's quick or less messy.  But since making an effort, we've been amazed at what Mirabella wants and is capable to do for herself-- especially now that she has us cheering her on. She doesn't need me as much as she did before.  Which is so great.  I love watching her grow and discover.  But sometimes it's sad.  I wasn't really prepared for that. 

We were talking at bath time tonight about  how, until recently, Emerie called shampoo "washpoo."  Mirabella said, "It's kind of sad that she doesn't call it that anymore, isn't it Mama?"  I agreed that it was.  "But it really is great that Emerie is learning how to say so many things the right way." So my preschooler gets it, but to me it's an epiphany.  

Seeing her lanky body, all arms and legs, on her first day of school with her lunch box and "suction-cup sneakers" was strange.  It felt like a fast forward.  I think that looking at her all the time lately.  She is not a little kid, not really.  She's sensitive and thoughtful, serious and smart. She puts together some outrageous outfits. She's imaginative and considerate, emotional and curious.  She's totally her own person.  You can't make her do anything-- regardless of whether she can-- she won't until she's ready.  

When we moved here, I tried to encourage her to practice riding her bike.  She wouldn't hear of it. "Nope, I already told you, Mommy," she'd say, "not until I'm seven."  There was no discussion on the topic that didn't end with that phrase.  Then the girl next door invited her to ride bikes out front.  All of a sudden, though she had cried about it not a day prior, she was riding up and down our (not flat) street.  Last week she asked if she could ride in the road with the older neighbor girls, and I reluctantly agreed.  I watched her ride away as if my heart was on that bike; I watch her introduce herself to a new child, aware that the child may or may not accept her.  Everyone will not be kind, everyone will not recognize the complex beauty that is my daughter the way I do; of course they won't.  And I can't do anything about that. I watch, acutely aware that this pain will return, earlier and with more frequency than I'd thought.  

I know my role is to cherish them, to enable them to grow and to teach them to believe and love and make good decisions.  I know the way all this is supposed to end and that I will have been a failure if they don't want to test their little wings. I know they'll always be my babies. I guess I just thought these happy tears wouldn't be here yet.  I thought I had more time before I'd start racking up the first of 10,000 little good-byes.

So the travel is done, the company has departed, the bank accounts are empty, and we are "home."  Grounded, as it were.  We've been back and just us for about 10 days now.  Strangely, Daniel hasn't been traveling and won't really be until next week.  Things are "normal," I suppose.  Though I don't really know what normal is for us.  Which is kind of the thing.  

The morning after we returned from Hawaii, Mirabella started preschool (which is another story, coming soon).  So we now have a place to be twice per day, twice per week, which is new.  The unfortunately-named MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) starts this week, twice per month.  I am told that, as a stay-at-home mother to preschool children living in a new place, this will be my sanity.  So this week we have school Tuesday and Thursday and MOPS Wednesday, and somehow this seems to me to be a "busy week."  Keep in mind that not so long ago I worked 4-5 days per week and raised my kids and managed my house.  But we are disoriented.  

I have been doing a bit better at settling into this new role, this new stage of my life.  Initially, it was so intoxicating not to set an alarm for 5:25 each morning that I let my kids wake me up.  There is a serious flaw in this plan: My children love waking up. I do not.  So they would burst into my room, all fuzzy and warm and excited and I would be upset with them, simply because they were awake.  Friends, this is not the best I can do. 

So I have been setting my alarm, working out, showering and starting my first cup of coffee before the children wake up.  I will not tell you I have been enjoying it, but I am certainly kinder when they wake up, which is a start.  The other stuff-- the endlessness of the home management tasks, the incredible shift of responsibility now that it's actually my job-- still overwhelms me.  I do not often sit still.  But I recently devoured Jen Hatmaker's book Out of the Spin Cycle,  which is really helping me to rethink and reframe (and in some cases, release) some of the baggage I've brought to my latest assignment.  Until Friday when I might have melted down a little in front of my startled husband because I just had to go somewhere-- anywhere-- where people other than the ones I keep alive were.  Even if I didn't talk to them.  Just to get out of my neighborhood. It wasn't pretty.  And so, I'm a work in progress.  

I remember telling a friend in Maryland right before our move that we really wouldn't "settle in" until September, since we had so much summer travel and company planned.  I said it casually, as if I had any idea what I was talking about.  I was actually right, but I'm still a little itchy that this (whatever this is) is taking so long.  

I am anxious to nail things down that don't work that way. Babysitters. A church. Friends. Old haunts. Familiarity. Things that just take time.   Previously, I thought I'd have "arrived" when I could get through a day without GPS.  Since our GPS came with our (2005) vehicle, and our neighborhood is newer than that, I had to ditch the GPS sooner than I'd planned.  It can get me most places, but it can never get me home. So it turns out, I think, that the real sign I have acclimated will be when I can get through a day with fewer than 75 Google inquiries about things around here.  Google, at the moment, is my best friend.  

The travel and busyness of this last season made it easy to be preoccupied-- easy to blame our lack of connections or roots on the circumstances.  But even I'm surprised when I say we've lived here two months.  It sure doesn't feel like it.  It doesn't feel like we have much to show for it.  

And so, it's time to begin.  

It's time to take the girls outside to play when the neighborhood kids are out there. It's time to stand awkwardly with my neighbors until maybe it's not so awkward anymore. It's time to look up from my children-- at preschool, at events-- and try to talk to the people around me.  I'm not sure how this happened, but I tend to hide behind my kids because it's easier than talking to so many strangers.  Which is why Wednesday's MOPS will be good for me (though please note I didn't say "lots of fun," at least not at first).  It's time to return to the (massive) list of churches-- weekly if we have to-- until we find The One.  We've been to three so far.  We have been trying to adjust our attitudes, to be open instead of judgmental.  To try to learn from the people at each place.  Each  of the three have been good, but we are looking for home-- so far away from ours.  It feels strangely like dating, the hope and the disappointment we've felt.  And, of course, the Google searches.  

It's time to find all the things I took for granted in Maryland-- the listservs, the farms, the stores, the doctors, the cheap places to eat and play.   It's Time.