I grew up in a fairly small suburban town just north of Seattle, the beautiful Emerald City. The house we lived in was on a hill overlooking the interstate and I fell asleep every night listening to the white roar of traffic on the freeway. I remember being lulled by the sound, comforted by its constancy. And I would let my mind wander, pretending that it was the ocean I was hearing. I created elaborate fantasies in my imagination, transforming my neighborhood into a remote coastal town and my lackluster backyard into a vast expanse of sand and beach grass. The blaring of car horns became lighthouses in the fog, warning ships of the dangerous rocks beneath the water’s surface, and the occasional squealing of police sirens became flocks of gulls searching for scraps along the shoreline. I would escape into this dreamworld every night before I drifted off, imagining the sandy adventures the next day would bring. No detail was left out: I was so specific in my imaginings that I could feel the grit of sand between my toes and in my hair, and the heat of a sunburn radiating through the thin sleeves of my nightgown. Sometimes, if life was particularly unsatisfying at home, I would dream that I was abandoned there on the coast, completely content in my aloneness on this peaceful imaginary shore.

The house I live in now is very close to the place where I grew up, near the same stretch of interstate. I can’t hear the traffic from inside my house, but if I step out on the porch the familiar hum of cars fills the air and I am rocketed back in time to those nights of pretending to be somewhere else. I fall asleep now to the cacophonyof worries inside my mind. I worry about my children, the bills, the future. I spend hours some nights going over the details in our life and listing everything that’s going wrong and what I should be doing to fix it. The irony of worrying is that it exhausts you physically, but at the same time it prevents your mind from being quiet enough for sleep. Not every night is that bad… I’m usually so tired in general that I can fall asleep fairly quickly. But some nights- like tonight- I can’t quiet things down up there. I worry and I fret and I work myself up into such a state that sleep becomes entirely impossible. So I try to remember the best advice I have ever heard, something Anne Lamott said at a reading here in Seattle that I was fortunate enough to attend.

“The most important thing to remember,” she said, “is to space out as much as possible.”

I’m good at that. I always have been. So tonight I will crawl back into bed, and crack the window in my room in order to hear the noise of the freeway. I will try to forget about my fears and worries for a night and recall those dreams of my childhood. I’ll listen to the waves crash on the shore and imagine the smell of salt and driftwood. I’ll plan a day for us tomorrow. We’ll build a city out of sand and surround it with murky, seaweed moats. We’ll walk the water’s edge in our bare feet, wincing as our skin meets the frigid water and sharp bits of shells and jagged rocks poke into the soft arches of our feet. We’ll eat on a towel, brushing gray sand from our apple slices and chasing a napkin that gets snatched away by the breeze. Our skin will smell like sunscreen and metallic sea air and our eyes will tear up from the bright light reflecting off the water. Tomorrow will be wonderful, and I thank God for blessing me with this gift of a vivid imagination. Dreaming of a better tomorrow has gotten me through so many hard and lonely nights, and it will keep me full of hope until that tomorrow actually comes.

Sometimes when I’m getting dressed for school or an evening out, I’ll turn and find my daughters standing in the open doorway watching me. They will follow me into the bathroom, perch on the edge of the bathtub, and rattle off endless questions about where I’m going, who will be there, what I will do, and why I have to “look so pretty.” They squabble and jostle each other, their squeals echoing off the tiled shower walls until I inevitably snap at them to please go find something to do. They quiet down then, and turn their eyes back to me. Their gaze follows each movement of my arms as I first sweep my hair up into a messy imitation of a style, pin it in place, and then spritz it with hair spray so it won’t move. They watch as I wash my face, rub sweet-smelling lotion onto my damp skin, and search for my eye shadow, mascara, and blush. I try to imagine what they’re thinking then, as they watch me paint my face, transforming the bland, freckled mommy they know into a stranger. I’m suddenly someone else, a mysterious woman who clicks against the floor when she walks and looks at them through eyes rimmed with black. I wonder if they are at all frightened by this fancier version of me who goes places they cannot and lives another life while they’re away with their dad.

She frightens me, sometimes. She’s someone new to me, and I am only just getting to know her.

I spent the day with an old friend yesterday, a woman I have known for years. We met when we were both pregnant with our first daughters, and we were very close during the first few years of our children’s lives. She is part of the landscape of Babs’ babyhood, present for so many important moments. She witnessed my breastfeeding trials, laughing with me as my over-active letdown sprayed milk into my baby’s face and down the front of my shirt. She was there the day Babs learned to crawl at four months old, both of us amazed at the transformation my baby made from an inconsolable fussy thing into a sweet and giggly cherub, utterly delighted with her newfound mobility. We spent hours on the floor with our babies, sprawled across a quilt littered with rattles, pacifiers, and teething biscuits. She knew the woman I was then, the restless, exhausted new mother who loved her family with every ounce of her being and tried to convince herself that was all she needed to be happy.

I hadn’t seen Kate in over a year, since before this new and independent me arrived on the scene. When we last talked, I was terrified of the changes in my life, unsure of how I would adjust and learn to cope. She assured me, as everyone did, that these were good changes. That this new chapter of my life would bring me so much fulfillment and joy, and that I just needed to be patient and let it all happen. She was right, of course. And it was wonderful to see the happiness in her face as she observed me in this new life, as this new woman, so at ease and comfortable despite the drastic changes.

“You are so different,” she told me. “Where is the girl who stayed in her pajamas all day and never left the house? You look so happy!”

And I am happy, truly. But I am scared, too. I spend untold amounts of energy back then forcing myself to be defined by motherhood and the life of a wife who stays at home. I think I almost brainwashed myself into believing that I was meant for that life, dismissing the loneliness and sadness borne of isolation as the natural hormonal changes that come with childbirth. I can see now that I was desperately alone and cut off from the world, secretly yearning for a bigger life but awash with guilt for not being fulfilled by motherhood. I am not defined by that life anymore, and as wonderful as that feels I struggle with defining who I am now. I am no longer “wife” or “stay-at-home mom.” I am this new creature, a woman with children that she loves and a rental house that finally feels like home and a schedule that threatens to make her crazy. It’s hard to believe that I am still me, only more so. I worry about my girls observing this metamorphosis in me and wondering where their old mommy went.

But I think my daughters know me better than I do. They know that I love them no matter what I’m wearing or where they are. They know that whether I’m reading to them at night, struggling to make it through another school day, or out at dinner with my friends, I am still their mommy. This life is different, but it has only strengthened the ties that bind us so tightly to each other. They love me equally in my pajamas and my heels, made up or frumped out. Nothing seems to matter to them as long as we are together, and for that I am blessed.

Much has changed. But there has been one constant that will never cease to amaze me: my daughters are the greatest teachers I will ever, ever have.