Pause. Go back up all your image files on your computer. Do it now. I've done it. You're a fool, if you don't. They can be lost in a moment nonreturnable. That shit happens.

I had a revelation last night. After feeding the children (onions braised in grated beets and butter, salted, and tucked into omelets with cheddar cheese. Red yellow and orange for dinner.) I milked the goats, showered, and dressed myself in a neat skirt with flats. I drove to town and sat in front of a local coffee shop reading a book about knitting socks. Behind me were half a hundred beautiful young people doing what they must do nearly everyday, sitting immersed in their study and gorgeousness sipping drinks being near each other. Seriously, I'd forgotten this sort of thing goes on. Life still happens in the big world, but no one told me about it. I'd forgotten.

I was waiting for my husband, picking him up after a three day business trip in Philadelphia. There I am, clean, out, waiting. My husband is moving toward me, tired, glad to be home. We met on the street, a simple thing we must have done thousands of times in the years before children. It was all too good. Instead of hurrying home we crossed the street and fell into a sultry dark booth in a tapas bar. We ate a bit, talked, and went home. Surely we looked completely normal and sane.

Or did we? I was strange and giddy. Which is not so unnatural feeling to me, but it was showing. The waiter took our order, macaroni and cheese with crab--which, frankly, turned out less impressive than the Kraft with canned tuna we made as children. He then turned to go and I waived goodbye to him. It was involuntary and definitely bizarre. A small fluttering wave, "Bye now."

It won't right. I've been in too long. Seriously. I gazed at my husband, listening to stories of the last few days, and realized that sitting in tapas bars with something to say is just another variation of what he does for work. And then I saw the truth. For the last 13 years, through everything he has seen and done, I've been home with the children. It sort of staggered me as it defined my adult life. I laughed and told him, I've been in the house with the same furniture and the same company all these years as the walls have changed around me. And the children have grown. I've been there. All that time.