What I would miss #1

When Logan was still a chubby cheeked wobbly little five month old baby, I returned to teaching. I spent two hours commuting and then time teaching and working after school and then grading papers at home. I was devastated. I hoped it would get better, but it simply didn't, at least not for me. I would come home and my mom (who was watching him at the time) would say things like, "Oh he did [insert a milestone] for the first time!" And I would act excited, but inside, I felt like I was missing it. All of it. My school was a small school and had budget cuts. I was the last hired, so of course I was the first laid off. I probably should have been sad, but I felt like I was given a gift. I left that day, and I never looked back.

Fast forward, and my little fellow is three and a half. It has flown by so fast that I don't even know where the time possibly could have gone. I often think about what I would have missed if I had chosen the alternative. Here's just some of what I would have recently missed:

• When Logan lays on the couch watching a television show and he rests his little bare feet on my leg criss-crossed.
• The snuggle-y bed headed boy in the mornings that insists on eating non-breakfast foods or dipping his pancakes in ketchup.
• The tiny little hand that always finds its way into mine whenever we get near a parking lot.
• Today, Logan picked up a dandelion, blew on it and said, "I wish that Mommy and me will be best friends forever."

Simple things. Small things to some, but larger than life things to me.