The Path not Taken...

I think a lot about the path not taken in my life.  Or maybe it's paths, because I've always liked to keep my options open.  I think Chris is struggling with this right now, letting go of what he thought his life would be like by this time and accepting what it is.

My life is so completely and utterly different from what I thought it would be.  Some days it's like living in a waking dream where I find myself doing something and I have to stop myself from thinking, "How did I get HERE?"  It's been a hard adjustment, painfully fought and very gradually accepted.  And now?  Now it's almost painfully sweet.  Most days.

I'd be lying if I said I never thought about that other path, the one not taken.  The one with an office, with a door I could close and walls lined with book filled shelves.  The one with the rich academic life.  I do think about it.  Usually when the volume of my abode has risen exponentially and every surface is sticky and I've stepped on plastic dinosaurs more than twice in the course of an hour.  

But Grace comes out with the fireflies, and I tuck clean children in to bed and pour myself a glass of ice water and sit down and put my feet up and think over the course of the day.  And it's more sweet than bitter, and at the end of my life, I hope I can say that most of the days were like that.