Choices

Today I did something no suburban housewife in the throes of a fully-developed midlife crisis should EVER do. I googled a classmate (I will not divulge whether she was a classmate in elementary, middle, high school, college or grad school) who pursued a career path similar to the one that I would have chosen had I not decided to stay home with my sons. Suffice it to say that, in the career realm, she rose directly to the top. I cannot list her achievements because you may know her, or at least know of her. It's that big. Sooooooo. Googled her. Depressed all afternoon. Felt the weight of my choices. I don't regret staying home with my sons. Would have regretted abandoning them for a high-flying career. Really. I am serious. Today's little foray into the outside world via my laptop did not pay off for me, though, despite my pride in the decision to stay home. I once again reflected on some forks in the road at which I have to wonder if I took what appeared to be the risk-free choice. I remember the Public Relations Director at LSU saying to me "We hope we can say we knew you when," when he was telling me he had found a way to raise my graduate assistant salary (I was a newswriter) so that I wouldn't take a job at a local magazine and leave his department. I am not bragging. I'm just admitting that I had choices at the outset of my adult life. I could have worked somewhere, written some things people would have read. Met some seriously interesting people. Sometimes I believe I would have garnered some more respect than the level I currently enjoy as head servant at 209 Jaclyn. Other times, I look at photos of my kids as babies and I am instinctively, over-the-top thrilled that I was always there. Always. This blog entry reads like a last will and testament. It's not. My life is only half over. I can still write (question in my voice). Actually, on a serious note, sometimes I truly believe that I didn't have anything to say until now. Not until I had ridden life's roller coaster up one side of laundry hill and back down into the valley of flea treatments for soda-stained playroom carpets, around the hairpin turns of progress reports, the loop-de-loops of middle-school drama, the angst of SUDDEN sleepover wakeups at 2:00 a.m. (WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAVE MADE THAT NOISE?), and the rush of a thousand carline "go-ahead" gestures. Okay. So maybe I simply cannot be serious. Maybe hidden somewhere in my future is something related to my propensity to laugh my way from tragedy to triumph and right back again. Oh, and note to self: "Google child stars that fizzled out, or dot.com failures in the future."