Dear Vicki: I'm the mother of three kids, twin 8-year-old boys and a little girl, 5.
Before I got married and had kids, I worked as a surgical nurse, and, I must say, I had a very good professional reputation. Still, once the twins were born, I realized that the long and crazy hours of both jobs, mothering and surgical nursing, were incompatible, and I chose to become a full-time mommy.
Once I made that decision, I truthfully never thought about it again. Now that my youngest child has begun kindergarten at a school with a full-day program, I finally have time on my hands to wonder about my career decisions.
Sure, my kids need me every day (especially as a driver), but if I got my act together, I might be able to think about going back to work. Am I supposed to pick up where I left off?
RETURNING TO THE LAND OF THE LIVING
Dear Returning: Welcome back! I, too, had an epiphany like yours. One morning about a year ago, I yelled up the stairwell for all of my kids to get in the car. Nothing new, there. This time, however, when I went out to my big, old SUV, there the four of them sat--in their own places, without car seats and with seat belts fastened.
It jarred me so deeply that I was hardly able to make the drive to school. No car seats, no bottles, no lifting anybody into a too-high seat; they handled it all perfectly without me.
It was my Emancipation Proclamation and my Waterloo, all at the same time.
I, like you, had had a vibrant career outside the home that three pregnancies in four years brought to a standstill. I remember feeling the angst at the time of giving up something that gave me great satisfaction (not to mention income), but I was able to choose staying at home rather, and I grabbed the opportunity.
That's not to say that I got amnesia. I thought about my job often while I was wiping poopy bottoms or walking the floors with colicky infants, sometimes with a yearning that made me weep. I would watch my husband go off to work in the morning and secretly yearn to hop into my own car to escape the countless crises that made up my day. No lunches at a sushi bar, no fancy clothes, no leaving my desk each night with the sense of a job well-done.
For years I considered it a victory every time I managed to shampoo my hair and to change out of my oversized sweatshirt and black leggings before my mate returned home. Still, I believed that my real job was at home with my kids, for as long as they needed me.
