The Year of Becoming

I will remember 2007 as the year in which I started to become several things, and, to note, it was the year that I started to become several things I had always wanted to start to become.

Including someone's mother. I've always wanted to be one. Really, always. I never envisioned my life completely untethered. I've been playing house, literally playing out scenarios in which I organize all of my cassette tapes for hours as though this is my Real Grown-Up House, or playing them out in my mind's eye, thinking about what kinds of voices I'll render when I read my kids bedtime stories. I'm so excited to become someone's mother in the new year (unless, of course, bambinorino arrives in the next few hours after realizing the clutch tax break he/she'll give his/her mother). But I know that to become someone's mother is to become someone's mother each and every day of Lego spills and Broken Curfew nights. Unlike apple pie wherein it's done when the timer goes BAWNNN, becoming someone's mother takes a long time in the oven, I hear. So let's get this baby preheated.

2007 was also the year that I started to become a writer. Now, we are not broadcasting live from the Actor's Studio, so I won't pontificate about My Craft or salute my many influences and writerly diversions. But I will say that it's been a great privilege and a great challenge to become a full-time writer this past year. Bossman said that the more one writes, the easier it becomes, much like writing music. The more you listen, the more you play, the more you write, the symphony just follows you. I'm so far from hearing the symphony. But I can see where my writing has improved in the past year, which required a great number of ego checks and even a letter from a fellow student who noted,

"Higher stylists recognize that commas are optional in many instances. Maybe you could look that up."

Oh. Oh ho ho ho ho HO. I'm looking it up, all right. Especially if looking it up, whatever it may be, can help me to become better, a better mother,...
a better writer,..
a better rubberband ball maker,
a better user of vending machines,
a better pumper of fuel,
a better sidewalk chalk artist,
a better stirrer of skim milky mochas,
a better hummer of bad commercial jingles,
a better taker of vitamins,
a better neighbor, a better wife, a better daughter, a better sister, a better version of what I am becoming....