24

Welcome to the twenty-fourth anniversary of my motherhood.

How it Began

In 1998, a few months before this guy became a possibility in the world, I had a biblical studies degree, I had been married one year, and I was three positions deep into the story of my work life.

Ah, the story of a work life. How BORING. No one prepared me for how boring that story would be and how much of my life it would comprise. “When I grow up, I want to have jobs,” we did not say in careers class.

I do not blame a single soul for this, but I for sure missed the message that “What do you want to be when you grow up?” really means “What are you willing to do for money day in and day out even if all it gets you is a roof over your head and the clothing and vehicle to keep doing it?

I can’t be sure no one ever said it that way to me, although why would they have? You can’t tell a starry-eyed high school girl who dreams of Hollywood that she’s going to be an administrative assistant for less than thirty thousand a year and never really find a career track that means anything to her. At least, I don’t think you can say it and still sleep at night. It’s not how it’s done. “Dream big” and “go for it” are still okay with me, although I do hope today’s career classes explain that work is a gigantic part of life - almost all of it, it seems - and you should probably figure out the kinds of things you like to do.

When it comes to work, knowing what you like to do is a very good thing to know about yourself and a good place to start.

In 1998, after three years in day jobs I had just kind of stumbled into, I knew I needed to start over with that whole career path situation so I carried my precious 68 hours of biblical studies to the state university in my town and asked if they would take me. They accepted me (but not the credits). Excited and a little scared, I prepared to be a married college student for about two months before the promise of John Michael Bohon showed up on a pregnancy test, and a generic bachelor’s degree did not seem quite so interesting to me.

I soon found a person who would train me to do medical transcription from home, and my many years of Being Mama first, and working second, began.

How It’s Going

Twenty-four years later, I am writing a book about the years that followed that decision. Like my cancer story, it will be a book about survival. This time, I am surviving a day job life when it is not at all what I expected of this one, glorious shot we get at living… and definitely not what I hoped for the second through fifth shots at living I feel I was granted after each of my experiences with sarcoma.

As I write the book, I realize I do not know the end. Have I survived the day job life? I never escaped it, which is my preferred story for surviving things. I haven’t mastered it, either. It just is.

As I write, my oldest son is in medical school. My middle son is in law school (he has a class called “lawyering” - this kills me). My youngest is a senior in high school (and has a class called Adulting) so they’re all on a track of some sort as I wonder, like it’s 1998, if perhaps I can start again like they are.

Medical transcription put me on a healthcare-adjacent track that I am still on today, but it does not particularly spark a light in me. My work days make me wonder what I have been doing all these years because it clearly wasn’t building an intentional, meaningful career that lights me up inside.

Then, like no other, this beautiful day in October swoops in to remind me where I’ve been.

I didn’t make these glorious men what they are, but I was there for it. It kept my attention a bit more than spreadsheets and committee meetings. It sparked a light in me. It made me proud, kept me worried, filled me with inspiration, and made me feel I was part of a great and beautiful thing. My days were filled with them. My evenings, too, because holy sports and music concerts, Batman, parents have places to be.

Many years ago, a publishing company rejected The Thank You Room, my book about my sarcoma story, the guy pictured above (when he was just a tiny raised fist on an ultrasound), and how we survived together. While still deciding, the pub board told us they needed to know more about what I had done with the experience. “Has Serenity gone all in?” they asked my literary agent. They needed “clear evidence” of my authentic transformation over the common American lifestyle before they could take a chance on me and my book.

I guess I didn’t convince them.

At my agent’s urging, I published The Thank You Room independently (independently is the other work story of my life). I think in the next book, I will address that pub board and tell them, you know what I did after cancer? I went to work. I parented my kids and wrote my heart out and kept trying to find myself in work and art while also clocking in at a day job forty hours a week because I had three kids in multiple sports that each required a different kind of shoe.

It’s okay if that wasn’t enough for them to publish my book. Sometimes it’s not enough for me. I rage against the fading dream of things I could have been. I for sure rage against the day job hours when I have no idea who I am or if I matter.

I don’t wonder those things with these guys. I feel filled to the brim with accomplishment. I am content when I celebrate this day. I feel audacious hope that my boys will fight the lost feeling I have about work. I hope and trust that they cling to the sense I never could ignore that maybe anything is possible because, truly, anything is.

It may not look like you expect. You may have to fight again and again the feeling that it was supposed to be different. Whatever it ends up looking like, though, it’s a life. It’s yours. And if you focus on what went beautifully, it can be filled to the brim with a wild and irrefutable feeling of success.

Mark those things on your calendar. Celebrate them. They are the anniversary of what went very, very well.