I’m not sure if it’s because we’re still so new to SoCal but I wake up excited.

Everyday is a new adventure and possibility:  Who might I meet?  Which new class or group will Olive and I check out?  What new part of LA will we learn about?  What will become our new normal?

I am not used to being passive in any form.  I am always following up and usually initiating socially, too.  But sometimes, it’s exhausting and frankly, it can flare up my doubts and insecurities:  “If I don’t initiate, would I continue to have most of my friends?”

But I’ve been learning to let go bit by bit.  I feel like He is showing me that if I dare sit back and see what could unfold without me masterminding it all, He will still open up opportunities.

Like today, Olive and I visited a school for her and me.  I found it not through any aggressive researching on my own but “passively” when my friend tagged me on a Facebook post and it was just what we needed for this new season.

Olive had a blast though she was skipping her fat morning nap.  She walked around bobbing her head like a li’l G, doing shoulder shrugs to the beat and walking right up to the other little cuties’ toys, instead of ackin’ like the shy, new gal.

Other moms even commented that she seemed so independent, and I was like, “Yes, only because I’m here.”  Sho’ nuff, when I left for adult discussion a few classrooms away, she cried like I had abandoned her Philomena style.  (Warning:  that movie got me laid out for weeks.)  I was called back even before I made it to the discussion.

On another note, I thought that by now, I wouldn’t care much about becoming “just” a mom once again after moving from NYC to here.  I need this “down” time of not juggling mom and work though definitely missing the paycheck for our growing expenses, 10% CA sales tax, and the pricier gas.

But when I see a son’s classmate’s mom in her scrubs in the morning or meet up with other lawyer moms who are currently practicing law, I do get that twinge again, that twinge I thought had long been put to bed:  Right now, I am “just” a mom.

When I signed up Olive and me for the class today, I was asked some routine sign-up database questions including, “Are you currently employed?”  Again, I am so much more comfortable as “just” a mom as a third-time mom but I did feel like explaining myself for a second:  Oh, we are just settling in and I’m with this little one.

I didn’t have to explain myself as the staff said, “Oh, I mean, you have that little one to take care of,” as if to help me out and justify it for me.  And then when she asked my highest level of education, and I said, “Juris Doctor,” she seemed surprised.  It just reminded me of how much our identities are wrapped up in our work or status, whether or not we enjoy that work.  So easy to tell someone “lawyer” when asked what do I do.

And further along that tangent, I remember a classmate’s mom in NYC telling me about another classmate’s family, how they were a “good family,” “both parents are anesthesiologists.”  Of course, I knew what she meant but that only tells me that they are highly educated and have high pressure, high paying, high status jobs, not that they are a good family.  Maybe I’m being a purist with words and labels but it did give me pause.

Anyways, I have to go drive to the boys’ school now.  So different that they don’t close schools for Rosh Hashanah here.

Maybe I will meet the other transplant from the East Coast, a dad I just met on Friday.  We were swapping move stories and feelin’ each other on $$$$ shipping costs and being new, even though I done boomeranged to my roots 13 years later.