No guilt, just grief

Dear girl, yesterday you made me earn my salary.

Oh wait--that's right--I don't get paid. Let me rephrase that: You made me work. You had a summer cold, a lovely one that made you cranky and lost you your appetite but did not make you tired. So you continued with your regular home-day program of perpetual motion, now accompanied by the foam phone your Mumms gave you on Sunday, which you held to your year while saying "hello?" You cried so piteously for "pen! pen!" that I dug out the non-toxic gel markers and let you have at the construction paper--not realizing until much too late that while paper is fun, flesh is better, and cotton onesies are best of all. You were, shall we say, well decorated.

I had the television on almost all day in a futile attempt to encourage you to sit down, but nothing doing. Oh, you would sit for a few moments. Just long enough to lull me into a false sense of security, and the moment I reached for my magazine--bam! Up you got, and off you went.

You did not want breakfast or any kind of regular meal, so instead I chased after you with arrowroot cookies, bowls of cheerios (which you dumped onto the floor), a sliced peach, a sippy cup full of watered apple juice, and a wad of kleenex to wipe up the metre-wide river of snot you left behind you everywhere. Finally, at 11:56 am, while sitting on my lap watching the scene in Shrek where they rescue the princess--you fell asleep. All was fire and noise and mayhem on the TV, but it was no match for your cold. Maybe because I had finally managed to pinion you into a semblance of rest.

I carried you up to your crib for your nap.

I wish now I had let you stay on my lap instead.

I miss you, baby girl. I do. These 40-hour workweeks are so hard for me. I know you're having a great time playing with all those exciting daycare toys and the wonderful women there who care for you so well, and how couldn't you, when half the time you come home with paint and markers all over your little arms and hands? I love your artwork, by the way; I am already saving up all of your little scribbles and projects. You don't have any sense yet of how to draw shapes; you're perfectly content with brightly coloured squiggly lines; and so am I, because you love to draw them so.

I don't believe that daycare is damaging you. Not for a minute. You love it. You lap up all the affection and admiration you can get from any source you can get it. Me? Not so much. I know I could never do the SAHM thing, in great part because I tried it for a year and it almost killed me. But the last few months, when I was doing two days of school a week--that was sweet. It was just enough. It was exactly the right balance. And I'm never going to have that again.

I think and think and think myself in circles, but no solutions come to mind. Yes, if I approached my employer about part-time work, I'm sure she would say yes. She would grumble about it, and I would have to work a lot harder while I was here, but I'm sure she would say yes. The problem is that we can't pay our bills on less than my full salary. Even with it, it's a struggle. Toronto is an expensive place to live.

I don't have a bad job, or a bad employer. I just miss you. Yesterday was hard, good maude, I was so exhausted by the time your Dad got home that all I could do was sit on the couch and say, "Yeah, she was doing that all day. That too. I know, it's funny, eh?" While he chased you around. And I finally got to read more than two sentences of my magazine. But still--it was sweet.

It was sweet to watch you careen around the house, pointing out everything you saw, from the rain falling on the deck to the crackers on the coffee table to the TV and the bears on the screen and the Dragon and the donkey in the movie, and the cat I drew on the construction paper, and the baby on the computer monitor. It was sweet to amaze you by snapping my fingers. It was sweet to make you laugh by kissing you under your chin a thousand times in a row. It was sweet to shake my head as you drew thick black lines all over your legs and shirt. It was sweet to watch you pound the TV screen with a pudgy little hand, shouting "rabbit! rabbit!" when Max and Ruby came on. And woe betide the hapless mother who thought we'd had enough TV for one day and tried to turn it off!

It was exhausting, but it was so lovely to be with you, and today I'm sitting here at my desk missing you like crazy. Knowing there's really no way I'm ever going to get more time with you than I already have. And it's not enough. It's not ever going to be enough.

There are mothers in worse circumstances, working 80 hours a week, not by choice but because the welfare money stopped and they were told to get any kind of work at all and that was all they could find to pay the bills, leaving their precious babies with unaccredited strangers, no police or safety checks or references, because it's all they can afford. I know I'm lucky, and I do feel grateful for everything I have and am able to share with you, but it doesn't stop me from missing you.

I went back to work last December 6th. In order to get the top-up benefit, I had to agree to come back for at least as long as I'd been on leave--eleven months. So I am required to be here until November 6th. In the beginning, although it was hard, I thought by then for sure I'd be used to this. I figured I'd adjust, and eventually I would be ok with the time we have together. But I'm not. I don't think I ever will be. And I don't have a choice.

I just miss you.

Posted by Andrea at August 30, 2005 12:23 PM under Tuesday Tear-Jerkers

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