This Time Last Year...

Meyer has now been in existence for an entire year. Ah...the memories! The early sickness, the panic, the first pictures of the lima bean that became this beautiful boy. If I believed in miracles I'd so be cliche and mark this one down in that column. *Sigh*

A week from today I go back to work. I'm really starting to worry about it and how I will deal with being away from Meyer so much. I know he will be with his Dad, which is wonderful, but it's not easy. I really got used to being just a Mom - a role with so many complexities and rewards that I never realized until I became one. It seems crazy to add worker and student back into the mix but I suppose that is what life is for everyone, a big juggling act.

I've also had some pretty interesting brushes with the past these past couple of weeks. An old friend who I have really wanted to see popped up on that great social networking bohemoth: myspace. We got together for a beer and to see what the heck we'd been up to for the past seven years. Turns out we are both married and trying to find our paths in life. (Yes, yes, I know...just like every other 24-32 year old today!) I also reconnected with a few of my old philosophy friends. One of my former peers is going to grad school in Philosophy at the New School and he had a going away party. (Yay David Craig!) It was quite a trip to see some of these folks as the last time we had interacted I was a pretentious philosophizer that, more often than not, had a drink in her hand. And now, now I'm a Mom. Again, weird.

My point in boring any poor reader with these antecdotes is that both of these "reconnections" got me to do some pretty powerful thinking about how I have changed and, because it's my nature, how we all change. How humans change. How we can identify ourselves as something and hold particular ideas/notions/behaviors quite dear. But then something dramatic, or perhaps totally undramatic, happens and that which we believe to be of value is updended.

I don't know if I'm comfortable identifying myself as a philosopher, or even a philosophy student, any longer. The questions I once saw as so vital (do we exist? what can we know? is there any external, real truth?) seem to pale in comparison to the very activity of raising and coping with a young baby. I am reminded of my idealistic self upon leaving high school. The one who still felt strongly about Objectivism and logic and I cringe a little bit while at the same time I miss her some. She was going to change the world.

OK, enough navel gazing. I'm going to go check Meyer's instead - such a cutie pie!