Love and Money

Here is a cold hard truth of our summer:

We may have to sell our house because I stayed home with the kids.

Of course it is not just that, but my time at home was a critical factor in where we are financially.

Come September I will have been home for four years. That is four years where Jonathan had to haul ass to keep us afloat. The time also coincided with the writer's strike and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

I love our house. I love it because it is beautiful, but I also love it in the way that only someone who has moved their whole life can love a place, a house that is really theirs, where every scratch and scrape and brick and tile holds a memory of us, our family. It is the geography and history of us. For me it is a bedrock, the mother country, our original homeland, our continent.

If I had worked through all of this, we could have held on. As is, we may, we may not.

And here is my cold hard truth: It was worth it.

I have loved my time with my boys. I would never, ever trade it in.

I got four glorious years to see my boys, be with them, take vacations, watch them grow, appreciate them, bask in them. They are a gift I never thought I would have. And here they are, on loan for a little while, and I got to be with them and savor them. And though it is uncool, unambitious, and very very un-American of me to say so, I am so deliriously glad I was here.