A fork in the road

Three years ago the phone rang, it changed my life and I remember everything about that moment. I'd been back at work for a few weeks, Briar was barely three months old and I was quite simply crippled with my longing for her. I was consumed with guilt at spending forty hours a week at a job that I loathed, working for people who didn't respect me and who operated from a playbook that I didn't have. A mortgage and health insurance kept me going back, and each night as I held Briar in my arms I wept.

When the phone rang I was faced with a decision in a moment that felt nothing short of God-sent, a door was opening at just the time when I felt as if the darkness might drown me. I've never looked back, ok, I take that back. I have looked back. I have looked back time and again, each time I am overcome by the same weak-in-the-knees, what-if-I-hadn't horror. But I did. I said yes.

The phone is ringing now, almost three years to the day. I never knew it could happen again.