Tomorrow is my last day of maternity leave before I have to go back to work. Ian will be four months old -- a seriously great maternity leave, right? My mom took 6 weeks with me. But, even with such a long leave, time flies. I feel like I was just a couple days ago I was getting my work self organized to take all that time off.
People keep asking how I feel about going back. And truthfully, I have no idea how to answer this question, because I don't really know how I feel about it. And my feelings on the matter change daily, hourly, minutely. Am I excited to go back? Definitely not. But I'm also not completely dreading it, either. Thus, the typical, endless struggle with working mom guilt begins again.
Here are the two sides of the coin. The "going back is going to be horribly sad and I'm dreading it completely" side: I love my children. Seriously, love them. I love being involved in their lives the way I've been able to while I was on leave - being the face Ian sees when he wakes up from his naps, and getting to pick Joe up at school every day. I love having the control over their days that I won't have when the nanny is there all day instead of me. I love being able to stop Joe mid-sprint and give him a huge kiss on the cheek. But most of all, I love that they know I'm there for them whenever they need me.
The "seriously, I really need to get the heck out of this house" side: Staying at home drives me a little nuts. I don't love that my biggest activity for the day is taking a shower (eh-hem, when that even happens), and I don't love that my biggest contribution to the world is making sure that the laundry is done and the bathroom is clean. I went to law school, for goodness sake. We have the monthly loan payments to prove it. So, I am excited to be back among the land of the living, where no one knows the names of all of Handy Manny's tools and very few can recite every word of The Belly Button Book. Where I can use my brain and my skills and help people. Not to mention that it will be nice to actually put on cute clothes again every day (once they start fitting again).
I think everyone who knows me would tell you that I wouldn't be happy not working. I'm not convinced that this is completely true, but I am convinced that I will never know if it's completely true. I'm coming to the realization that I'll probably always work, and that by the time we can afford to give our kids the life we want without my salary, they will be old enough to be at school all day anyway.
But all of this is really beside the point. I am going back to work, and I will continue to work for the foreseeable future, for one big huge fat reason that will never go away, no matter how much money we have and no matter how old the boys get. I'm going to work because I want to be the best possible role model for my boys. What better way to teach them to respect women as equal to men (which, seriously, a depressing number of men truly do, even these days...what does it say about my fellow lawyers that that the "dumb blonde" card is the easiest one for me to play to get my way?) than to have a mom with a great career? My mom had a stellar career for my entire memory, so it never occurred to me, or to my siblings, that women shouldn't be entitled to have every single opportunity that they are willing to go for. Being a working mom isn't the only way to instill this lesson, of course, but it sure is an easy way.
The key, as they all say, is balance. My mom may have had an intense career, but she was home for dinner every night and was with us all weekend. She went to all of our soccer games, football games, baseball games, dance recitals, piano recitals, and on and on and on. All of us knew that we were way more important to her than her job--but, inexplicably, we also knew that her job was part of what made her her. She loved going to work and kicking butts all day, just as much as she loved curling up on the couch in her comfies with her latest romance novel (sorry for outing you, Mom).
So that's my new goal. Letting my kids know that they are the loves of my life, but that they aren't my entire world. Trying to tread that fine line between neglecting the kids for work or neglecting work for the kids. I think I can do it, with the help of my ridiculously understanding husband and my sainted nanny. And a lot of wine.
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