My husband and I were cleaning out some boxes in the garage the other night and I found some artifacts from my past that I had completely forgotten about. Once upon a time, I worked for Seventeen magazine, had a column in a local newspaper and was published in a few anthologies. By once upon a time, I mean when I was in high school. Growing up for me was more difficult than my parents had anticipated. Instead of the normal aches and pains of adolescence, life was complicated by real adult situations that at the ripe old age of 16 when I graduated from high school, I was in no way emotionally prepared to deal with any of it. The irony here is that through it all, all I really ever wanted was to be a wife and a mother. I had no fantasies of being a career woman although all signs at the time pointed to a great career in something writing related. At every turn, I knew how disappointed and disillusioned my parents had become because I was headed in the opposite direction of the great life they had planned for me. My mom never wanted me to be "ordinary" and although I think of a lot her plans had to do with the fact that she was in many ways trying to live her life vicariously through me, I understand now why she has been so frustrated with many of the choices I have made. As I was going through an old file folder with acceptance letters from many of the universities I had gotten into, my husband interrupted my nostalgia and asked, "If you had all of these things going for you, how did you end up here with me?" Now there is the million dollar question...