Worker Bee

I'm a working mother. When I was younger and thought about getting married and having kids, I always invisioned that I'd be a stay-at-home mom to my kids. I pictured lovely days of baking cookies, playing outside, going to the library and the park.

I pictued a perfectly decorated and cleaned house and children that didn't whine because there was nothing to whine about.

And then...I didn't meet Tom until I was 30.

He was a divorced dad of three older kids (they were 14, 15 and 18 when we got married.) I told him before we even met for our first date that if he didn't want more kids not to waste my time.

He worked third-shift as a manager at the local Walmart when we met. He was still paying child support on his older kids.

And this was all fine. No big deal.

Then Alyssa was born.

I took my twelve weeks of maternity leave.

And when Alyssa was thirteen weeks old, I left her with my mom and went back to work.

And I hated it. I hated being away from her, having my time and my energy sucked into something that didn't relate to her.

Except, it sort of did. Relate to her, that is.

See, we need my income to pay our mortgage and to buy groceries and...

There's a lot of justificaiton that goes on. But try to explain to a two year old, or even a seven year old why you have to go to work when all she wants is to spend the day with her mommy.

Alyssa still asks me why I have to work.

And I try to explain it. I explain that I work because my job provides the insurance that pays the doctor bills. I tell her that I work so I can pay for her gymnastics classes and the extra treats she wants when we go grocery shopping. That I work so she can have those fancy Sketchers shoes that light up.

But again, those things don't matter to her. She just wants to spend the day with her mommy.

She asks me why Daddy can't be the one who has a job that provides insurance.

See...Tom quit his job at Walmart when I was six months pregnant with Olivia. I supported this decision.

He'd been doing a little side work for years and in the year previous to his quitting Walmart, he mentioned the possibility of going full-time at the side job and quitting the Walmart gig.

I told him if he could prove to me that our bills could be paid with just the money from his little venture and my work, and we could save what he brought in from Walmart for a year, I'd support the decision.

And he did it. So he quit Walmart and sells items on ebay fulltime.

And it did him a world of good. His stress level dropped, six weeks after he quit working third shift, he looked ten years younger.

But...my stress level stayed the same. I know, I know, it isn't always about me.

Except, well, here, it is about me. And when it comes to the girls, it is about me. I'm the mama. They want me over anyone else. That's just how it is, at least in our house.

I don't want to be a worker bee. I wish we has scads to money so we could live where we want, do what we want, spend weekends at the beach or in the mountains, with me baking cookies and keeping a clean house instead of me always being tired, always losing my patience with my lovely, sweet little girls, who are just little girls who don't ever get enough time with their mommy.

Yet we all do what we must.

Alyssa goes to school even though she doesn't always want to.

I go to work and put in my 9 hours a day. I go home and find them something to eat. I attempt to pick up the stray toy or ten. I load and unload the dishwasher and put the laundry away.

And each night, I kiss my sweet girls goodnight and hope that in the morning, Olivia will sleep through me getting out of bed so I can have a ten minute shower by myself in an effort to refuel so we can do it all again.