A week before leaving for college I was at the kitchen sink washing dinner dishes. I looked at my reflection in the dark window. Wait a year. A whispered impulse I still think about.

Waiting a year might have been better. I can’t say. But sometimes delay gains little. My husband and I waited to marry, going to premarital counseling for a year, and still said I do to the same cache of unsorted issues.

A couple years into our marriage we decided to wait another three or four before having children. I was pregnant the following month. And just as well: I don’t think anyone, really, begins their parenthood ready.

Now I want to share my writing. Ready and not ready at once: this is the first piece lifted from my notebook.