Member-only story
Off Course
It crept in slowly — so slowly, I almost didn’t notice. But I let it happen.
I was sitting on the front porch of the home I had dreamed of my entire life. My kids ran barefoot through our safe little cul-de-sac while my husband tackled the yard work. It was a picture-perfect scene, the kind I once thought I wanted.
I looked around. Other moms were doing the same — chatting, watching, existing in this rhythm of suburban motherhood. And they seemed to belong. Like they had been made for it. That’s when it hit me: I was a porch-sitting mother.
What happened to me?
I used to be a lively, city-dweller with a packed social calendar, a career that gave me purpose, and exciting nights that rolled into early mornings. Now I was here, in rural Virginia, swatting mosquitoes and twiddling my thumbs, wondering when exactly I veered off course.
This wasn’t what I expected motherhood to be.
But then, a moment unfolded that only I was here to witness.
My son and his neighborhood friend crouched over a patch of mud, a jar in one hand and some makeshift “bug zapper” in the other. He rattled off names of each tiny creature, deciding which ones would live and which were doomed to a swift fate. His curiosity, his joy — it radiated.
