So one of the more difficult aspects of this return-to-full-time work has been the abiding awareness of an ending of sorts: I am back to work full-time; I am committed to this; my children are growing past a full-time need for me; I am not at home with them any more.
I no longer have babies.
I wouldn’t say that I loved everything about the baby-stage. I would not claim to be a *baby person.* I like babies. I love some babies. But I Absolutely Adored my own.
And this stage, it would seem, is Decidedly Over For Me.
I live in the neighborhood where I pushed my own infant son in his stroller. I pushed all my infants’ strollers in this neighborhood, in fact. And many other mothers and fathers can be seen, at different hours, pushing their little ones here.
But funny how I notice them now. How little ones give me a pang they never gave me before. I have become– is it possible?– the almost-middle-aged woman who gave me tender smiles when she saw me with my little ones. “My, you’ve got your hands full,” she would invariably say. And I would invariably answer, “Lucky me.”
You may say that I am exaggerating this change in my life. You may say that I, and my children, are much younger than I realize. You may say that I am sentimental.
I say, that may be.
So when I saw the woman coming out of Wal-Mart and I saw that she had a little one in the basket seat of her cart, I was immediately filled with reminiscence: of days when William was my only one, and he sat in that seat, and we chatted together as we did our errands in Wal-Mart.
And then I drove closer, and I saw how long his little legs were, and I noticed that he was wearing a mask over his mouth– the kind you wear when you should be very careful about catching diseases. I saw the odd angle in the way he studied the sky, and I saw that, underneath his blond hair, his young skull bore scars.
And I thought that there are all kinds of grief, and that I should count my blessings.
