A new deal
admin September 17th, 2010
I can hardly believe that in a few months I will have done this professional writing thing for a full year.
All of it, the move, the worry, the excitement, and the frustrations of those first few weeks seem still so acute, so recent. Perhaps all this is because I am still unsure – unsure of where I will go from here, unsure of what I want to do.
I love writing. And I’m good at it. I always thought so before, but now I have some empirical evidence. And that feels good.
The problem is that I miss my son. Every. Single. Day. I know that many working mothers miss their kids. I know that many mothers work and have kids and do both well. I know that we will adapt. Hell, I think we already have. The pain of our separation has lessened, and my son seems resigned to the fact that his mother will leave him in the morning.
The problem with me is that I know what I am missing. I took care of him every day for 18 months and I know exactly what it means to stay at home with a child. I know how it feels to never get a shower and wear ill fitting clothes and worry about money and have food and dirt on me and not have adult conversation and have a cranky sick or teething kid, to change diapers and play the same games over and over. But I know that as much as I thought I would dislike all of that, I absolutely loved being, every day, with my child. I also know how it feels to have private jokes and conversations, to have him wake up and see me and smile, to know what is going on in his head, to have playdates, to see him delight in the wind, an ant, a hose, to see him confident in me, sure that I will never leave him.
I left him, and I know what I am missing.
I am missing the depth of knowledge of my son that I had when I was with him most every day. Knowing him like that made me, I am sure, a better mother. When he acted or reacted, I had a larger library of knowledge from which to draw. I knew what he had eaten and how well he had slept and what he had just learned, who he had played with and what had happened and I could put his behavior into context. My library is now incomplete. Parts of my son are lost to me.
I am missing opportunities to teach in those moments that present themselves suddenly, and without warning. I was with him when he walked and talked, found spiders, encountered new people, discovered rain, and tasted cookies. He fell and looked at me. I guided him every day. My mother is doing that now. And though she loves my son and she has been a mother, she is not me, and she does not teach the same things in the same way. And I think I am better.
I miss cooking, for him and with him. I worry about what he eats. My mother does not know about nutrition and she doesn’t take him to play dates. He is lonlier now. He is without other children. I worry.
And I can’t even think about having another child, a child I want, when I don’t feel like I have enough time with one.
So I am left to decide where to do from here. I love writing. I love my child. I am working on a solution. Maybe I can freelance. Maybe I can work three days a week. I will do something. Because as much as I love writing, I don’t love it more than mothering my child. And this is a surprise to me.