Oh, so that explains it.

I was moaning to my husband my usual litany these days; missing my kid, my back, missing various other peeps, no job, an upcoming surgery (minor), what do I want to be when I grow up and so on. But what I was really harping on was my job prospects (of which there are currently none.)

I am 41. Who does not know what they want to be when they grow up by age 41? I have ideas, but nothing sticks. I tried teaching thinking that would be "it" but, oh boy, was it not "it." Nothing sounds good, nothing sounds possible, nothing sounds plausible.

Finally he interrupted my tale of woe to remind me of a truth, "You've had the job you wanted but he's moved away to college. You want that job back but it's not coming back and I know that's hard for you."

The truth may set you free but it most often makes me cry. So I cried.

I did love being an at-home mom. I loved it. I never did catch onto keeping the house clean enough or meals on the table at certain times; but I loved the endless days of watching my son unfold. Years after I assumed I'd be back at work, we were homeschooling instead. Then he started high school and while my intentions were good, I could not resist being there when he needed me.

Let me take a break to say how incredibly lucky we were, we are, to be able to run our household on one salary. My husband recently retired from the military, so we had excellent benefits to boot. I got so much more time with my kid than most people get and, for that, I am truly thankful.

I also want to say that there is nothing wrong with both parent working or a single parent working and not just because they need the money but because they want too. Not everyone is equally matched to every job and being an at-home parent is a job. It just happened to be something I felt very well matched too.

There is too much residual pain left to care for other people's small children. I want those children to be mine! I used to think that infertility was something I would come to terms with, now I think it's something where the terms keep changing and that is extremely annoying...not to mention heartbreaking.

I liked who I was, what I did with my days. I want to be that woman again but I cannot. What am I going to do now?