Dreams have no deadline

My husband just got home from a 10-day fishing trip. In some ways it felt like he just left, and in others it felt like he’d been gone so much longer.

Besides looking forward to seeing his beautiful smile again, I was also looking forward to having some help with the kids. He’s more like a mother than a father, just to give you an idea as to how involved he is.

Being on my own with the children for this length of time gave me a small glimpse as to what it must be like to be a single parent. I have several friends raising their kids solo, with little or no help from the fathers, and I always wonder how in the heck they do it.

Between the kids, the dogs and all the stuff my husband normally does, I had far less time for work than I usually do. And when I say work, I’m not talking about the endless housework or laundry I allowed to pile up.

But that’s what it must be like every day for single parents who don’t have a strong support system to help. For them, it is much trickier to find the time and resources to realize their hopes and dreams.

Even with a tremendous partner like mine, I still find it difficult balancing home and work and often wish I’d followed my dreams before I had children.

Back then I could afford to focus on myself. And even though it seemed I never had enough time to do everything I wanted to, I can see now that I actually had all the time in the world.

But time wasn’t really the issue. The problem was not having a clue what my dreams even were. It’s pretty hard to focus on something that blurry.

Now when I meet young people who know exactly what they want to be when they grow up I feel excited for them. They have a huge head start and if they can just focus on their goals and keep their eyes on their prize, they’ll realize their dreams and continue to make more as they live their lives.

My own kids are young. My daughter’s only seven years old and my son is turning 10 next week. Despite their age, I often ask them what they want to be when they grow up just to get them thinking along those lines. I’m sure in the next decade their answers will change a whole bunch of times and it will be interesting to hear all the things they come up with. But I’m hoping that by the time they’re in their late teens or early twenties they’ll have a clear idea as to what kind of work they would want to do that would be so much fun that it wouldn’t actually feel like work.

Last week my daughter wanted to work at Dairy Queen and my son wanted to be a toy designer. This week she wants to be in the circus and he wants to be an actor. Something tells me they’ll find their passion much earlier than their late-blooming mama did.