Seriously?

As I sit here, mere days away from the business side of turning thirty, I think about my life. As a child, I had no need for dolls. My favorite gift I remember getting for Christmas when I was little was a huge box full of office supplies. A plethora of pens, pencils, legal pads, tape, envelopes, and "While you were out" message books. I could play office for hours. Nobody would play school with me because I always had to be the teacher, and I was mean! I've always felt more comfortable with adults than with children, and I remember my father saying that raising me was like raising a child-sized Ronald Reagan. I didn't like for people to laugh at me, and I took things very seriously.

Twelve years ago, the ink fresh on my small town high school diploma, had someone told me at 30 I'd be living in Tennessee, married to a southern boy, with two children and not working I would have probably thrown up. I had such big dreams of a law career, working long hours, living the single girl life. I wanted to live in Boston and take the subway to work, not in a brick house in a subdivision across the street from a cotton field, driving an SUV to the park.

Eight years ago, the ink fresh on my large university diploma, given the same crystal ball to look through I REALLY wouldn't have believed this would be my life. I was all about the fast track. Law was still in the back of my mind, but I already had a job and I was doing great for a single girl fresh out of college. I loved my roommate (and I still do love her!), we had a great group of friends, a cute apartment, and I felt NO need for a husband or children. In fact, I don't think I even wanted them. I never really felt that pull that people talk about, that need to have children.

Until I met my husband. Apparently I just hadn't met the person I needed to have children with. Perhaps it's because Christopher is five years older than me and was already past the time in his life when he felt the need to spend his weekends in bars. I don't think that's it though. Literally the day I met him, I knew we would get married. I have no idea why, but I knew. We both did. And as our children started to quickly come, everyone thought we were crazy. Everyone but us. Don't get me wrong, there have certainly been times in the last few years of our lives that we've looked at each other and wondered what the hell we're doing, but then we look at David and Henry.

Seriously, how can we be so lucky? How can I be so lucky? When David was born, I "gave up" my career to stay home with him and, subsequently, Henry. I didn't give anything up. I have a husband who loves me, even with all of my personality quirks, bossiness, strange obsessions, and stupid jokes. He works hard to support us so I don't have to. He loves us unconditionally and enormously. He tells me all the time that I'm the best wife he could have (clearly he doesn't know what else is available!) and I know he means it.

And no matter how emotionally draining, frustrating, messy, loud, and chaotic our lives seem to be, it's perfect. David and Henry are amazing. They are sweet, loving, smart, fun, adorable, silly, and curious. They are so different, yet sometimes seem to be extensions of one another. They are perfect. And they are mine. And when I think about my days of not wanting children, I realize I didn't want other people's children. I needed to know what it was like to want my own.

Lots of people ask me if I'm ever going to go back to law school. I'm not totally ruling it out, but it's not for me right now. And I feel when they ask, it's implied that what I'm doing now -- staying home and raising our children -- somehow isn't as important as law school, or as noble. Seriously? What I'm doing now, this giving up my career and "just being a housewife", is the most important thing I'll ever do. In. My. Life. So, as I peer down the barrel of the 30 year old gun and I think about my life, I realize that it's not what I haven't done in the past that defines me. It's what I've yet to do with my family in the future. And I can't wait!