The Kindergarten teacher asked the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. The little girl answered. I want to be a mom. The teacher responded. That’s not a job.

In High School everyone seemed to know what they wanted to be. She wasn’t sure. In her free time she mostly babysat, and you couldn’t do that forever, could you? During her senior year she took a nursing assistant class (mostly because she needed extra credit to make up for all the classes she seemed to… ummm… well, that she seemed to skip). And she loved it. Everything about nursing. Caring for others. Taking care of them. This is what she wanted to do. She started college for her pre-requisites in nursing and began working as an assistant at a nursing home. She even loved that. She worked with Alzheimer’s patients. And she loved it.

And then she decided to love the wrong guy. The guy her mother hated. The guy who was cute. The guy who was bad for her. The guy who ended up sleeping with her best friend. But who still asked her to marry him before she managed to escape. It took three weeks after getting to New York for her new job as a nanny before she broke up with him over the phone.

For a year she worked for a great family. She enjoyed kids so much that she picked up an extra babysitting job while her kids were in school. On weekends she’d go down with friends to West Point. They all wanted to marry one of the cadets. But she said, no way, not me, I don’t want to be moving around constantly for the rest of my life!

When her grandmother became ill, she decided to go home to help and ended up going back to work at the nursing home. She decided she was going to finish nursing, either by going to school or by joining the army and letting them train her. But then that first Christmas, Brandon came home for a visit.

And Heather feel in love with the right guy.

It’s one of those stories we all dreamed of as young girls. To have our best friend’s older brother, who we have a massive crush on, finally see us as something other than a little girl. It happened that Christmas. She needed a date to her sister’s wedding. He agreed to go and they were engaged by the end of the week.

Unfortunately, he was stationed in Italy and not around to help plan the wedding or work on passport and visa stuff. So for the next nine months, she did all that AND managed to make it through every Sunday lunch with her in-laws-to-be. (I was appalled but she says she loves them!)

He got home a week before the wedding. And three weeks later, on September 11, 2001, she was driving to the airport to fly to Italy to be with her new husband. As you can imagine, she didn’t fly that day.

They loved Italy and the two years they spent there. She always seemed to meet people who needed babysitters and so worked for several different families there. She got pregnant in Italy and when they left for their next orders in Las Vegas, she had her own 5 month old to take care of. But it wasn’t long in Vegas before she was doing additional childcare again.

She kept thinking she needed to get back to school, but felt that would’ve taken so much time away from her daughter. And she really enjoyed it. Being a mom.

And so they decided to have another child. They tried. And tried. And tried. The trying was mostly fun, but after more than a year they decided it was time to see if something was wrong. There were tests. Lots of tests. Lots of yucky, yucky tests. The answer? The doctors didn’t know what was wrong.

Great. They considered all of the options and decided to try a low dose of Clomid first to help with things. It was awful. Her mood swings and their fights. They decided to stop.

The further fertility steps seemed daunting and adoption seemed like the better option. She knew she could do all the fertility treatments they suggested and in the end she still might not get pregnant. But with adoption, she knew that eventually she’d get a baby. So they began the paperwork.

Brandon went TDY shortly after and she was having a really hard time. With everything. There was just a lot of stress. Brandon suggested over the phone that maybe she was pregnant. No way. But to humor him, she kept meaning to pick up a pregnancy test at the pharmacy. But every time she went they seemed to be closed. It took weeks for her to find out she really was pregnant.

Her second little girl was born in Vegas. And she was bald. Bald as a ping pong ball. People kept calling her a boy. Heather pierced her ears as soon as possible. And still they kept saying boy. It was pretty upsetting. She looked for bows and cute hats, but couldn’t bring herself to spend tons of money on them so decided to make them herself. Lots of them.

And one day a friend suggested a local craft fair. She liked it. So she and another crafty girlfriend would go a couple times a month. One would pick up the coffee and the other the Krispy Kremes and they would get to sit and chat and have some much needed adult conversation. It was fun. And made her a little money.

Between being a mom, doing some child care, lots of involvement in her playgroup and the craft fairs, she was pretty busy. Going to school continued to be on the back burner.

And then they got orders to Okinawa. Finding information on the island was hard initially. And then one day she stumbled upon us. Okinawa Hai. And she began to lurk. For four months she lurked. And then one day found out one of our writers, Melissa, was PCSing to Vegas and so she jumped into the fray.

“Oki Hai was the biggest help to me. Getting to read everyone else’s experiences and feeling comfortable asking silly questions and knowing that you all would help me. More than TMO or the finance office or even our sponsor. This website provided the little details I really felt I needed as a spouse.”

When they arrived she decided she’d try the Market Day program at Schilling Community Center on Kadena and continue selling her bows and hats and girly things. She reserved a table. And never went.

She may still go one day (since she’s got boxes of supplies!), but for now, she’s willing to admit that there is just too much that she wants to do and see here. Too many places to see, cafés to lunch at, stores to visit, festivals to experience.

And she thinks it might finally be time to go back to school. It’s been seven years since she dropped out and she’s had a hard time figuring out what to pursue. But when her oldest started school this year she realized she was a little bored. She started volunteering one morning a week in her daughter’s class and one day it all clicked.

Since she was 12 years old, she has done stuff with kids. In many ways, she’s been a mom since then or at least has had lots of practice doing all the things that a mom does. Babysitting, nannying, and even nursing fits with the whole profession-of-care idea. And there is another thing a mom is – she’s a teacher.

So in the new year, Heather will be going back to school. To start classes towards a degree in Elementary Education.

Her Kindergarten teacher once told her that being a mom wasn’t a real job. How did that little girl answer? She said, It is too a job! And that’s what I’m going to be!

And she is.