You Can Like the Life You're Living

On Sunday, Nathan and I moved to Jackson, Minn., population 3,500. That's where Nathan took a test engineering job with AGCO, an international agricultural manufacturing company and one of Jackson's largest employers. This is our first real move, and with Nate finishing his degree at the U of M and me wrapping up my job in St. Paul, finding habitation got a little hairy. You'll note we moved into our apartment Sunday. Nathan started work on Monday. "Hey, do I have khakis?" he asks me Monday at 6:30 a.m. "Nope," I say. So, he started his first day in jeans.

For now, I'm unemployed. I wake up in the morning and eat breakfast with Nathan, then do the dishes. Sitting at our kitchen card table, I read Betty Crockers for something to make for supper. I go to the library and check my email, write to friends, research going back to school or learning to be a commercial baker, fill out job applications. When I'm there, I see they have federal tax forms and I mull over whether we should file our taxes on a 1040 or a 1040A. Then to the post office, the hardware store, the newspaper publishers. Back at home, I do laundry, sort paperwork, wait for Nathan to be done with work.

After three days of this, I began to see how staying home alone all day had the potential to unhinge me after awhile. Don't get me wrong, I'm having the time of my life. It's been my dream to snuggle up with cookbooks at 10 in the morning and to dance through my living room at 3 in the afternoon because I can.

And yet, the Catholic German half of me is wallowing in guilt. It's not 1950 anymore; you can't let your husband work to support you while you stay at home all day, especially when you are childless and have a dishwasher. The desire for personal and professional forward motion never stops, overwhelms me with the low and persistent humming all around of what's possible, what's next. And when I can't stand one more minute in my head, I take my tea to the spot where the sun makes squares on our living room carpet, sit in our only living room furniture - a chair gifted to me by my grandfather Gerald - and let it sink in how lucky I am to have this moment and to be here in Jackson, population 3,500 plus two.

Genesis Chapter One: "And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good."