first day

I was like a nervous mommy today. Only mommies don’t make their kids four-egg omelettes…well, maybe their teenagers. Nervous wife…only I’m not nervous, really…my guts are full of butterfly promise. Ben usually makes breakfast for me, but today I stuffed him with an omelette, apologized that I didn’t have time to put vegetables in, only cheese, bugged him about whether he had enough warm clothes, fussed about the long day ahead (he has classes, and then work), asked about books and notebooks. He fell right into step: bleary-eyed fatigue, too tired to be excited right now, looking forward to classes but perhaps not to the 14-hour day ahead, not exactly thinking about the fact that today is the first day of the rest of his life. But at one point I put my hands on each side of his dear face and looked into it, and saw little Ben swimming up out of the years of his life, saw the open hope in the way his eyebrows turn up in the middle, in the way his face is relaxing and opening like a window…

I am so proud to be his wife. I am so proud he is my husband.

I can tell you now!

Ben told me his news over a payphone, and we got cut off, so I didn’t have a chance to ask him if I could tell EVERYONE that…

Ben got into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

And not only that.

He was awarded a $6,000 Merit Scholarship just for being so friggin awesome.

Sorry, folks, no babies just yet. Just paintings. Babies in the artistic sense. Art babies. Paint children.

My husband is going to study art at the Art Institute. And he is also going to study Art Education at the Art Institute.

I am so proud of my baby.