Books, Babies & What I Believe
It's Sunday at 7:56pm. The girls are in bed. Husband and I are waiting for our Mexican takeout to arrive. It's a splendid spring night outside. And I just wanted to come here and say a few things.
Four years ago, I became a published author when my novel LIFE AFTER YES debuted. It was a huge deal for me, and I imagine for any writer, and I remember that day fondly. The truth: I hoped that by now, I would have published a couple more books. That's how I saw things happening. But instead I sit here four years later, knee-deep in the writing and editing of my second book, but without having published another book. This has panicked me at times. This has made me sad at times.
But not tonight. Not at all.
Today is a happy day when I find myself remembering with a pure and dizzying nostalgia what it was like to see my book in the world. I remember walking into my neighborhood Barnes & Noble and finding it on the shelves, holding it in my two hands, carrying it to the sales guy and saying, I wrote this. He smiled a good smile and whipped out his pen, asked me to sign some copies. I did. I happily did. My life changed that day and it didn't change at all. I was still the same Aidan, still a daughter missing her Dad, still a mom in love with her babies.
Four years later, I'm immersed in this life I've worked very hard to build and honor. I have three beautiful girls who exhaust me and inspire me daily. I have a man I love more than ever. Our marriage is good and deep and true in part because we are lucky and in part because we treat it with care, because we take the time to get to know each other. Still. I have four sisters and a mom I love and so many beautiful friends in real life and here in this exquisite ether. I have big dreams and big goals and hopefully many good books inside me, but I find myself breathing it all in, trusting that things are happening at the pace that is right for me.
Maybe these are eloquent excuses, my way of rationalizing where I am and where I am not. I don't think so though. I think that after many many years of striving and struggling and spinning and soaking in insecurity (and Pinot Grigio), I'm settling into an awareness that things are what they are, and as they should be.
There will be stories real and imagined. There will be books read and written. But for now, there is this.
This life.
This love.
This.
I believe we should all reach for the stars and dream big, but we must not forget to squish our feet into the earth beneath us and look around at all that we have. Right here. Right now. That's what I'm trying so hard to do.
And tonight? It feels like I'm succeeding.
