Muscle Memory

Did you know? I hadn’t left the state in about six and a half YEARS. Recently, just driving around Bangor made me realize that I was no longer comfortable on the highway. I was out of practice. But for my older kid’s eighth birthday, I drove her down to Boston for a long weekend–just the two of us for the first time since her brother was born.

So I was nervous about driving in Massachusetts traffic, I was nervous about leaving my four-year-old behind (I’d never been away from him so long), and I was nervous about taking public transit for the first time in over a decade. Excited too, of course, but the nerves tried to drown that out.

Well, the drive down had a few of those nerve-wracking moments I’d been so afraid of, but I acclimated. My younger kid adored the undivided attention. My older kid had an absolutely ball. (The escalators were her favorite part!) And I adjusted to moving through a large city like it hadn’t been 15 years since I last lived in one. I found I still had that muscle memory. Even the drive home was relaxed.

And now I’ve started working a day job for the first time in over seven years. I’m substitute teaching–something I haven’t done before, but which still allows me to put parenting first–and there’s another kind of muscle memory that comes with the interview and showing up and learning on the job.

So maybe, just maybe, I can use that sort of muscle memory to make updating here a habit again.

I’d like that.