That April Day

What are the scariest things you’ve done in your life? 

Probably the scariest thing that I’ve ever done was quit my job.  I had been back to work for only 5 weeks after my maternity leave when I quit my job.  I didn’t wake up that morning knowing I was going to quit, and it took several months before I stopped looking for a job and realized that staying at home was even possible. 

That morning in April turned out to be the first blind leap into this life.  After dropping my baby off at day care I went to my office and on my chair was a letter (the same letter was on all my colleagues’ chairs) informing us of our new hours.  On top of our regular appointments during the day we now were required to work till 9 pm each evening and if we didn’t like it we could quit. I closed my office door and called D.  “Can I quit?”  I asked him after a brief explanation.  He was scared too and didn’t see how we could survive so his first instinct was to say no, but when I read him the letter he said “we’ll make it work.”  On my way to my regular morning meeting with my boss I asked for a box…..  My boss greeted me at his office door and knowing that I would be upset asked if I had a pack-n-play so I could bring L with me to work in the evenings.  I told him that it wasn’t necessary because I was quitting.   Within minutes I was packing my box and saying my goodbyes when the Vice President was standing at the door.  I was feeling forced out, and that this was the intended outcome of those letters as I was the only mom with young children, and I told her as much.  I don’t remember what she said, but it wasn’t satisfactory, but nothing she said would have been at that moment.  Who knows what I was thinking that day?  I was post-partum, I was missing my baby, and I wasn’t sleeping very much.  Maybe not the ideal decision making scenario…..

We learned a lot in the months that followed.  We learned that we could survive without cable TV that we could stick to a very strict budget, and that ramen noodles aren’t just for college students.  It was that April day that made this life I live now possible.  It was that beautiful morning that we stepped onto a new road and had no idea where it would lead.  Prior to this day D had often talked of re-enlisting in the Army, but I resisted.  It was scary enough being married to a police officer I imagined that being married to a soldier would be worse.  But after I quit it seemed that the Army was our “open window”. 

Here we are more than 7 years later and I am still able to be home with my boys….we even lived in a foreign country for crying out loud.  It’s amazing this life I am in now.  There are only a handful of individual days that you know will change your life, a wedding day, the birth of children, and the days that you make difficult decisions.  Those days are always scary….and beautiful.