Like many people, the last few years have had their fair share of hard times for me and my family.  Some have given up; others keep up the fight and think about what they know they can hold onto.  Maybe it’s a talent that you really shine at.  Maybe it’s a job that you just got and now you’re finding out you’re pretty darned good at it.  Maybe, like me, it’s your family.  They are my one true thing. 

My husband and I started out as naïve as all first time parents.  People will tell you that “kids will change your life.”  Of course, you think, there will be some late nights and schedule changes.  There will be moments that can be called heartwarming—brought to you by a Hollywood baby themed video montage.  What is more difficult to convey is the extent to which your entire base of understanding changes.  The child works like a virus program that corrupts all of your operating systems.  Often in good ways, some bad.  Literally no decision—even one so trivial as ‘do we need milk’—is made without first thinking about the potential implications for your little virus.    

Shortly after potty training our daughter Ellie we regularly found ourselves saying the phrase “Where are your pants?”  It’s something a single person would never imagine themselves saying unless it was the morning after a great night out.   Our daily struggle to get this child to cover her private parts is the stuff of legend.  One day, my husband had finally gotten her dressed and turned briefly to another task.  No more than ten minutes later he rounded the corner to the living room only to find her holding a foam sword and wearing nothing but froggy rain boots.  So once again, he asks where her pants are.  Ellie says, as though it were obvious, “Women who hunt bears don’t need pants.”

That’s what children will do for you.  There you are, head down, just getting things done.  Then they shake it up a bit and make you look at things a whole new way.  My husband and I drop jaws, go speechless, scratch heads.  We marvel at how we ourselves might be nearly overcome by anxiety or worry and yet a three year old can think “Yes, there are bears out there but I am the one to fight them.” Somehow, despite the fact that I don’t deserve it in the least, the universe has given me this self-assured little person to watch over and a partner to share her with.

I find myself starting this blog as a way of having something to myself in the final hectic semester of a degree program that I hope will allow me to ‘re-invent’ myself.  Who knows what the future holds.  Let’s face it, I’ve always been a little bit like that aging wrestler that’s just too stupid to stay down.  Maybe next time it will work.  I’m not the only one out there.  Whatever you want to say about us, we’re not a nation of quitters.  We’re scrappy.

For now I want to enjoy writing in a way that’s fun, free, and unfettered by academic constraints.  I want to write in the spirit of pantlessness.  Perhaps someone else will read this and perhaps I will help them laugh a little.  I hope so.  Perhaps I can inspire us both to keep going.  Someday we may be ready to hunt bears too.