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to do,” I said with a meaningful look, as I left him with one of my nursing friends one morning so I could keep an appointment. I was only half joking.
    With the next baby, I wasn’t taking any chances. As soon as he seemed to get the hang of nursing, I gave him a bottle. “This is a bottle,” I told him. “And this is a breast. Questions?”
    He had none.
    I was prepared to give the third one a pacifier as soon as his head was all the way out. He generally had one in his mouth, one clipped to his shirt, and one tucked in my pocket on standby.
    Over time, I found I needed to revisit more than just my position on feeding and soothing. Having a second child forced me to consider how long I could possibly keep pouring so much of myself out. I was starting to think I might not be the earth mother I wanted to be, any more than I was the executive mom I thought I would be. After the first two years of immersion, the romance of homemade yogurt and hand-sewn sock puppets began to wear thin, as did my self-esteem. The labor involved in taking care of small kids is menial and repetitive. You’re cleaning up other people’s body waste day after day. There’s an aspect of it that works on your ego in a good way. It can be a humbling act of devotion. It can also make you feel like shit. My complete financial dependence on my husband was subtly corrosive, too. I began to feel as if I wasn’t really qualified to do anything but mind children, keep house, sort the mail, and make appointments—tasks that translated to the bottom of the pay scale in the job market. It frightened me. What if Patrick dropped dead, and I had to provide? Where would I even begin?
    On top of all that—or more truthfully, buried deep beneath it—I was getting bored. Potlucks and playgroups were my main social outlet, and they weren’t enough. I called Patrick at the office to talk, and sometimes fight, several times a day. I poured my creative energy into projects that never got finished, problemsolving that didn’t help anybody, and any other diversion I could put between myself and the dread truth that as much as I adored my children, I needed something more to feel fulfilled. But I couldn’t admit it without a specific idea of what “more” might be. I needed a clear exit sign.
    It came in the form of a part-time job as an assistant to a priest at the Episcopal church I had wandered into one Sunday when my firstborn was a few months old. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there, but it intrigued as much as perplexed me, so I kept wandering back. The liturgy was familiar; the “smells and bells,” as Anglicans say, of my Catholic schooling, minus the guilt and the gory crucified Jesuses. The service brought some structure to the week, when my days were so much like each other that it seemed to have no beginning or end. On Sundays, at least, I had something to get up and get dressed for, a place to go. It was a portal to a world that included, but didn’t revolve around, children. And it was a space where I had a chance to connect with myself, a prayer of hearing the small, still voice within—if the signal hadn’t gone dark permanently. The priest, Susan, was a sexy, mature woman with a sleek silver bob and flowing purple batik robes—so radically different from the cadaverous Catholic priests I’d known as a kid, that I had to do a theological double-take. I was wary about the Jesus-y bits, but I was drawn to her offbeat book groups and workshops on meditation and dreams. It was in one of those that she mentioned she was losing her assistant.
    The small, still voice pinged. That’s your job.
    I didn’t say anything, but when she offered the position to me a few weeks later, I considered myself drafted. “Yes,” I said, without really knowing what I was agreeing to do. It turned out to be the perfect part-time job for the next five years, requiring