One morning as I packed up my breakfast and lunch to take with me to work — it’s easier to eat on the road some mornings — I grabbed two little bran muffins and put them in a to-go container.
Around the corner came my two-year-old son, screaming, “My cupcake!”
I didn’t even know he could say cupcake! I didn’t even know he knew what a cupcake was!
I suppose it does make sense, logically — he’s around other kids all day, and he’s encountering all kinds of life experience through the children’s shows he watches, his peers, his teachers, and who knows what else. But sometimes it still boggles my mind when he comes up with something out of the blue.
I must confess there was a drop of bittersweetness to that moment. What other things have I missed, besides learning to say “cupcake”?! I sometimes begin to wish I could be with him all the time, so I could witness every little step, every little growth, and every little development.
Every now and again, those wish-I-coulds drive me into a bit of a funk. Nothing is wrong that I can identify. I don’t even feel sad, exactly. I just feel sort of perpetually on the verge of tears. And when I find myself off balance like that, I think it’s important to examine it, to push on the bruise a little, to taste those tears and see from whence they spring.
So I examine, and most often I find at the root of it my ever-present dichotomy: I am a mom who works away from the home.
I am not sure why this is such a sticky wicket for me. I love my job — both what I do, and the organization and people for whom I do it. I love the opportunities to be creative. I have chosen the right career path, because I find my work truly fulfilling and satisfying and — dare I say it — fun.
But from time to time, I have a spell of wishing I could stay home with my son. It makes me sad to think of other people spending so much more time with him than I do. I long to play and teach and learn and run and dance and sing with him all day. I ache to snuggle him down to a nap so I can go take care of other household things.
And I know it’s not politically correct to say that, and some people will probably say that I should worry that my employer is reading this. But the reality is, I am a mom who works away from the home. My husband and I have made a conscious, intentional, directed decision that it’s in our family’s best interest for me to work. And I’m wholly on-board with that decision, and with all that it means for our family today and in the future.
But nothing worth doing is ever easy. So some days … well. I’d rather be home playing basketball with the bug.
The good news is, there is one bonus to being a working mom who’s not with her child every second: the little sweet surprises, like a torpedo-speed diaper-clad monkey careening into the kitchen yelling “my cupcake!” in the morning. That’s pretty cool, too.
