The good parent

Denali gave me a poem for Mother's Day.  The poem read:

Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always leave my fingerprints

On furniture and walls.

But every day I'm growing
I'll be grown up some day
And all those tiny handprints

Will surely fade away.

So here's a special handprint
Just so you can recall
Exactly how my fingers looked
When I was very small. 

I bawled.

Not because I thought it was sweet or endearing.  Not because it was so absolutely adorable (it really is!).  I cried like a blubbering idiot because I look at those handprints and already see the time that has blown by.  They aren't tiny.  They aren't the squishy little pudgy baby hands of my 6 month old.  They are the long, lean strong hands of my 7 year old.  A respectable, fantastically well behaved boy who I am proud to call my son.  So, I ask, why am I so sad to recollect the last almost 8 years of my life?

I think it's a lot of factors - all rolled into one.   Reno and I met in college.  I quit in my second year of Animal Health Technology and became pregnant pretty quickly into our relationship.  We had no money to spare.  We lived in a small apartment, lived on $50/week for food.  Aurora and Denali were both born while Reno finished up a diploma and a certificate course, and I worked an office position at a pet store.  I knew what I wanted to do with my/our lives, and Reno supported me all along.  Together we toted our belongings and two small children through 3 different cities/towns, living on meager student loans, government funding, and minuscule wages.  In the end of our schooling journey, I had my career, we bought our first house in a fantastic community - things were really on track!

But WAIT - we were expecting another child!  We knew we wanted more children, and while the timing wasn't the best, he was still a welcomed blessing :)

You have to realize reading this that anything we did as a parent with Aurora and Denali was really born out of necessity.  We simply didn't have the money or the ability to make a lot of decisions that a parent usually gets to make.  A lot of things we did a certain way because financially, we didn't have another option.  Space wise, we didn't have another option.  Energy wise, we didn't have another option.  We lived the way we had to, and we took each day as it came.  I'm proud of what we went through to make it where we are today, but that doesn't mean I don't look back and WISH it could have been different.

With Eloic, we had the freedom to make choices.  One of the choices we made was for me to be the one working and providing wages, and Reno was to stay home with the kids.  It's not a traditional choice, by any stretch, but it's one that works for us.  Do I wish it was the other way around?  In some ways, yes - in most ways, no.

Why yes?  A large part of me feels like a failure.  Why do I feel that way?  Our children have everything they need... they have food on the table, a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, parents in a healthy and loving relationship, parents who love them and take care of them,  a mom who would rather be at work than home with her kids.... WAIT... say what?  Well, no - that statement is not entirely true, but is that they way they are going to feel?

I love my children more than anything in the world... ANYTHING.  While I thought that working and doing whatever we had to do to keep the family going was because we HAD to, little did I know, it would actually be a choice.  The real problem is that I want to do it all.  I want to stay home and be with my family.  I want to be there to kiss boo boos and send them off to school.  I want to be there to show them how much I love and care for them.  I also want to develop a career.  I want to use my brain to solve complex programming problems.  I want to walk in to my place of work with my head held high and know that I do a good job.  Unfortunately, it just doesn't feel like there are enough hours in the day. 

I can't be there for it all, and I feel like a failure for it.

I look back on all those years and see missed moments.  I look at pictures and weep.  Those chubby little cheeks and infectious smiles are gone.  The hugs and kisses and endless cuddles are fading. 

My babies are growing up, and if feels like they are doing it without me.