It's All Led Up to This Moment:

Ah, well, it's hard to know where to start. Should I start with the fact that both mornings I woke up in the Oakwood, I had no idea where I was (or where my husband was, thanks to the gargantuan king sized bed we now share)? Should I start with trumpeting the virtues of Ikea for making a generic corporate-style apartment something resembling home? Or how about the fact that the sound-proofing in this place is so adequate that both my children have slept past 8AM since we got here? Or more appropriately, should I start by mentioning that as my husband adjusted his tie one last time before leaving this tiny cubicle of an apartment, I looked at him and knew that the last 10 or so years of his life had come down to that moment?

It's amazing to recall the first time we talked about Stefan's dreams of working for the Department of State. It was the second time we met. We were standing in the grass near Crissy Field in San Francisco. He was telling me about why he was going to going to graduate school for international relations. He said, "I want to do something meaningful. I want to help people and make a contribution." I was so self-absorbed at that point in my life; I hadn't yet considered the fact that one might actually want to devote his life to making a contribution to other people's. At that point, I didn't view my own work, running a catering business, as making much of a contribution (now, I realize that you could make the argument that cooking for people, nourishing people, indeed impacts their lives, but that wasn't a part of my thinking at the time). It was almost 5 years ago that my husband told me that after he finished graduate school, he hoped to join the Foreign Service (at that time, he had taken the exam and was awaiting the results).

My husband failed the entrance exam this first time he took it. But, to his credit, he took it again after getting his Masters degree. We both viewed this second time as an opportunity for him to redeem his own image of himself. I said, "yes, take it. That way, you will know one way or another." Well, he passed and I thought to myself, "oh, shit."

He subsequently passed the Oral Exam and then my "oh, shit" turned into, "oh my god, you're actually going to do this to me." We were living our lives as if we were going to stay in the New York area indefinitely. We had moved back from California to be close to our families and get settled in, get married, make babies... we even looked at buying a house. He had a good job at Bloomberg, which he really liked. We were a young family, coming along in our way and everything seemed to be going well. But there was this thing that my husband wanted so badly hiding in the corners of every decision we made. Knowing how much it meant to him, I encouraged him and together, we waited over a year for his security clearance to come through. It was the last of many steps to his becoming eligible to be hired by the State Department. It came last March, but we had a very new baby and wanted one more before we made the move. So he put himself on the "do not call" list and we got to work. We made one more baby and spent as much as possible with our families.

And now, after all that, I am sitting in the Oakwood and he is off to his very first day of training. It is so amazing that it's all led up to this moment. This is what life is all about: identifying your dream and making it happen. I owe a lot to my husband for setting such an incredibly fine example, not just for my little girls, but also, for me.

Go Team America! Go Stefan! I love you so much and I am so very proud to be your wife.