I’m reading a book about a woman who runs away from her life. No, it’s not Ladder of Years. No, it’s not A Breath of Air. It’s The Pull of the Moon. Apparently this is a whole genre. I bet if I thought about it hard enough, I’d think of a bunch more novels of women taking vacations from their real lives. Do you know of any more?

I don’t really want to run away from my life. At least, not today.

A fewf people expressed surprise that Brett got a vasectomy. Sometimes they’re surprised because it seems redundant — after all, aren’t we infertile? Well, yes. But the thing with unexplained infertility is that it can theoretically snap back at any time. Who knows what glitch is causing me to be barren? Who knows if the switch might accidentally get flipped on sometime? The other people are surprised because they think that maybe I still want to get pregnant. Oh no, dear reader, now that I’ve shut that door, I have also leaned against it with a sigh of relief. If I get hankerin’ for another baby, it’s back to the agency we go. (Frankly, I don’t see that happening.)

I was at the library with the kidlings last week dropping Noah off at a science class. There was a woman there with two tow-headed little boys and an even smaller, even blonder little girl with freckles across her nose and lots of sass.

“I not sister,” she said, pointing to Madison. “I sister there!”

She was pointing to the stroller where a wee one was lying inside. I watched the mom manage her brood, hair pushed back carelessly and comfy mommy clothes on. I could tell that this outing was coming at the end of a long, exhausting day not just because how could managing four kids be anything but long and exhausting but also because her mouth was pinched and her eyes were tired. Still, just for a minute, I longed for her life.

This is pure crazy talking because I think a family of four is about perfect for me and I am LOVING the seven-year age range we have going on between siblings. But this woman is a symbol to me of some kind of comfort that I’ve made up in my head about big families. I have no way of knowing, but I decided that her husband makes enough money that she can be “just” a housewife and that her only extra-curricular activities are something undemanding, like scrapbooking. I also decided that she is more patient than I am, more organized than I am, and more deeply satisfied with her life than I am. She was probably glancing at me and thinking, “Wow, I bet she’s living the life of ease and luxury! Only two kids! And the big one such a help!”

Brett asked me this weekend — during our long discussion inspired by Madison’s brush with death — what I would do if I didn’t have to work and I pictured myself on a verandah learning to write essays properly. And then I thought about how I could spend the rest of my life saying, “If only I hadn’t had to spend so much time trolling for sources and talking to PR folk, I coulda been a contender.”

These books of women running away from home, obviously they resonante for a lot of us. Parts of it certainly resonante with me. But I have a wonderful husband (something missing from those stories) who listens to me. Mostly I just want to run away with him and I guess I’ll get to do that when the kids get a little bigger. Still, this sense that there’s another life we could have been leading — it must happen to all of us — it’s only useful if it inspires us to get working anyway.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

I don’t have a verandah. I don’t have a lot of time. Still, I may as well work anyway. I’m on a mission to learn to write a properly organized essay with big exciting ideas all nicely measured out for reading ease.

Madison pulled herself to standing today. She climbed her chubby little hands up the door and then slid back down because she’d drooled so much on the floor that her feet were slipping. Even nuttier, she climbs up me — crawls to my arms and then climbs up my shirt-front — and then let go. I don’t know where she got the idea that she was ready for standing hands-free. I certainly haven’t given it to her.

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