Elgan has the most wonderful habit of writing me encouraging notes just when I feel I need it most, yesterday commenting that I seem like �the most patient and indulgent mom ever.� I actually laughed when I read that remark, but I was very grateful for it and its timing was better than you could possibly know.

The truth is, I don�t feel at all patient. I feel most impatient. I feel like it takes me forever to accomplish anything. I often feel resentful of my fellow students who have the luxury of time to work on their projects. I have an incredibly hard time dropping my work mid-task when duty calls, and I often find myself excruciatingly bored after suddenly forfeiting an intellectual connection for a diaper change. And yet, every now and then I stop and wonder why I wanted to accomplish the task in the first place when there is this marvelous little person who amazes me in a thousand small ways all the time if only I stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to pay attention.

I suppose I remember to pay attention more now than I would have, say, had I had children at the age of 20, like my mother, although she was excellent at paying attention anyway. I feel like I�ve had a life, I lived by myself for well over a decade before settling into any binding commitments. I�ve done some things I wanted to do and been some places I wanted to go. I�ve done some daring things, some stupid things, and a few remarkable things. I may feel trapped and frustrated sometimes with the endurance contest that is motherhood, but I made a very clear and conscious choice to be in this position and I am extremely grateful that I had that choice. I know that I may not have the career I once envisioned for myself, but I also will not be wondering what I missed at home. And I know I can make some kind of career I will enjoy for myself when the time is right. I�ve always tried to live my life with no regrets, which sometimes means doing some difficult, scary things. I can�t think of anything more scary for a person like me than the decision to stay home with my kid. I have never been good at eliminating options, and a child eliminates many. On the other hand, keeping your options open closes the door on parenting, at least in the way I want to practice it. Ironic. Marriage was a great leap of faith but motherhood, that�s a leap into an abyss.

And the other truth is that when I had the time to myself, I squandered it. I get more work done on my dissertation each day now than I did when my dissertation was all I had to do. I didn�t know what to do with the great days yawning in front of me. I didn�t know how to manage a project like this. That was a skill I learned in my years away from it working at another job. I now value my time to work, and therefore my work also, so much more now that it is so rare.

The last few weeks have been bad. It has become rare for me to have more than an hour to work before 8 or 9 at night, which, since I get up most mornings by 5:30, is not when I do my best work. I am not patient. I am short-tempered. I am grumpy. I am tired. But for every day where I say �no� I try to have a day where I say �yes.� Because AJ and I both need the yeses. I don�t know whether that makes me indulgent and time will tell if it works as parenting � I feel like Jekyll and Hyde. But it�s what works for now to keep us sane and happy most of the time. And I do look forward to being able to have real conversations with AJ, because I love the way his mind is unfolding and I can�t wait to see what happens next.

[Second entry today]

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