Driving the boys to school the day after the election, Noah remarked,“Dad, next election I’ll be 11 and in 5^th grade.” I shuddered a little at those words. How on earth can four years seem as if they will be here tomorrow?

I am standing on the playground of the Shelburne Nursery School on a hot July day in 2012 watching Noah play with his soon to be classmates and trying, unsuccessfully, to quell the despair and anxiety that is engulfing me. How, I wonder, will I be able to continue as a stay-at-home-dad for the next four years? Though this is not a new role for me; I’d been at home since Noah was two weeks old. Yet, I am spiraling downward, franticly trying to come up with ways that I could go back to work. The previous January my father had passed away, in May we had moved from Utah back to Vermont. I was back in my home state, but everything had changed, I’d changed. I kept imagining an ink black tunnel with no end as my only path.

August 31st of this year I stood at the end of our road and watched both boys climb onto the school bus and wave as it pulled away. Noah was starting first grade and Luke was starting kindergarten. My daily companions had moved on. The time had disappeared before my eyes and I wondered, and still do, if I had taken full advantage of the gift that I had been given.

The first two weeks of school I had an unshakable feeling of being uncomfortable. As my father would say, I was out of sorts. Out of sorts with the monumental change that had just taken place. Slowly that feeling began to subside and over the last couple of months I have mapped out a haphazard rhythm in an effort to make my days and weeks more productive. At first I worked on my list of projects that I had been saving specifically for the school year. That list, though, has been whittled down to a mere nub and I am beginning to wonder how I will fill my time after all my normal house duties are done. I suppose I could be productive and shop around the poetry manuscript that has been sitting on my desk for the last two years. We don’t have traditional TV, so soap operas are out. If they are even still on. Recently, I picked up a little work helping an arborist, it is physical work, gets me outside and I get to learn a new trade. Which is good given, that after seven years of being home I don’t feel like I have any marketable skills.  Winter, however, is not an arborists busy time and I am not looking for full time employment or even part time. Just something to fill the time and add a little to the bank account.

It has certainly been anything but easy these last seven years. With a cocktail of love, faith, prayer, determination, medication and counseling I finally have come to the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Not because the boys are in school but because I have finally become comfortable and accepted the role that God has put me in. Up until recently I never allowed myself to just be a stay-at-home-dad. I always tried to attach something more to it, whether it be blogger, artist, poet, designer, runner. I always needed, or thought I needed, something more. The truth is I don’t need anything else. It is imperative that stay-at-homes have hobbies but we also need to realize what our calling is. The future, as always, is uncertain. There is always a chance I could slip back into the darkness of four years ago. However, with my change in perspective I am choosing not to live in fear of that happening. Instead I am going to embrace what I know in my heart to be true. That being a stay-at-home-dad is exactly what I should be doing.