the after school club

Most days when Gabriel and I pick up Frances at school, we come prepared for the after school club. We bring snacks, water, sometimes a book or two, sometimes the makings of a sports collage.

Yesterday the weather was fine, and it was nearing five by the time the club members dragged themselves off the playground. Gabriel and I usually greet this late afternoon idyll with a similar happiness. Our bodies relax, our minds loosen their grip: we will spend this wide-open hour outside, free from structured activities, and with friends.

The club is what we call the few families who linger at the playground after school. The other mothers are a pleasure; the other children are accepting, imaginative, and even game for Frances's elaborate pretend games and Gabriel's sports collage-making. We've found a place teeming with peers. I've already begun to sink into this reality as if its a hum drum, regular sort of thing, but sometimes I look around and marvel. How did we find this?

Yesterday, while we mothers sat in the shade chatting idly and watching the children play, it struck me that this scene was like a page ripped from the book of fantasy images I had been accumulating during my last weeks of full-time work (that I had long ago discarded, thinking it utterly unrealistic). It might just be that my children have grown bigger and easier, but it is also that I'm starting (three years later!) to figure out how to live in this still-new town.

Earlier in the day I talked with two other mothers on the playground after I picked Gabriel up from preschool, and we confided about the Quarterly Crisis (equivalent to Tina Fey's Triannual Sob). Every few months we have to freak out about the professional life and identity we are unsure we will ever be able to return to. All three of us work in some capacity now, but part-time, and in circumstances that are limited and far less appealing than those of past jobs. It's rare to find fulfilling, challenging work that you can do for fifteen or twenty hours a week. But oh, it's a pleasure to find other mothers who know intimately the exact spot I'm in.

In other news: you may have noticed that I decided to monetize. There's an ad below this post. It's a trial thing; deep down I know it's not the greatest idea but I wanted to see if one can actually make any money through ads. 'One' being me, of course. Some time ago I made the decision to scale back my regular work hours in order to do more freelance writing this year, and when Mike and I made up the budget, I set a monthly earnings goal for myself. The goal represented the minimum of what I should be making to keep everything else afloat around here - and believe me, it seemed like a modest goal at the time. Yet I'm falling short of meeting it. 

I have never felt comfortable being our family's spender (groceries, gas, prescriptions, incidentals) while not being a family earner. The first 24 hours of advertising on Homemade Time earned me 77 cents. Clearly, this is not going to pay the bills...yet I'm still reluctant to take that icky ad off the site. The reluctance is irrational and deep, about both money anxiety and worldly recognition anxiety. Will I ever have a meaningful job again? Will I ever do something judged worthy of a substantial paycheck? Might this ad for vitamins on my mama blog somehow ameliorate the situation?

Taking care of my kids and sharing them in broader, caring communities is a rich life. We'll be just fine, even if I don't earn as much as I'd expected to. And yet I succumbed to Adsense! 

I hope you'll forgive me. Sometimes it's hard to trust in an unknowable future, to relax into this overflowing present replete with blessings.