I was sitting in the pool while the cool water ran over me and the summer sun was beating down. I was watching my child climb up the slide and splash into the water below. He came running to me laughing a deep belly laugh arms wide open that would soon be snuggled around my neck.  Suddenly I felt my heart beating in my stomach. And I thought…We have made it.

When I had Aiden I was going to school full time at a junior college and working evenings at the local Pizza Hut. After bringing my tiny child into our home I rushed to the computer to let my professors know my homework would be late. It would be late because I had a baby.

It is a little funny now. Looking back…

Seeing how young I was. How naive. Remembering the confusion that was pulsating through me.

I think back to the time that Aiden was just growing out of his infant car seat. We needed a new one and I had no money. I was so ashamed. I couldn’t give him something so simple. Something so in-expensive. I had to ask for help. I am not good at asking for help. And I am not sure that I will ever forget that moment.

Being a young mother brings on so many adventures. So many humbling moments.

I will graduate college next December. I have taken major steps in my career. I was mentioned in the New York Times. I have traveled all around the country. I have collected stories and letters from women around the world. I have raised a brilliant young man to the ripe age of four. And soon I will be moving into a house.

I never thought that I would get here.

I never imagined things would move so quickly.

I kind of wish that I would have reveled in those moments a little more. The times when I was un-sure that things were going to be ok. I worried through them so often. Now I giggle thinking back seeing how things have turned out.

I think I am going be ok.

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Wallcott