To my Grace and Ana,
Next week you will be four months old and our lives are going to change a little. Three times a week I am going to leave for awhile and go to a place we call "work." Before you were born I thought that I would want to go back to work immediately. I didn't think that staying home with you was going to make me so happy. I didn't know that I would find such joy in the daily tasks of being a mom to twin girls. Perhaps I was afraid of you. Maybe I just didn't know what to expect. But now I know and I wish it could be different. If I could be with you every moment of every day, I would.
We are lucky. Because I work for your grandpa I don't have to be gone so much. I will always be able to adjust my plans if you need me. I will be able to spend four days a week with you, and on the other days you will stay with your grandma and the other good people we found for you.
There have been many things in my life that I thought were hard. But I know the hardest thing so far is going to be driving away from you on Tuesday morning. I will be thinking of your smiles and wishing that I was holding you. My heart will be breaking as I think of all the moments that I will miss.
I know that it will get easier eventually. I know that I do good work and that my contributions to our family are important so that you girls will have a good life. But if I could do it all over again, I would get a smaller house, pass up on all the unnecessary purchases and have done everything I could so that I could afford to stay home with you longer. In four short months you have transformed me from wanting to be a "working mom" to just "mom."
I promise to treasure the moments that I am with you. I promise to do good work--valuable work--so that our time apart will not be in vain.
Love,
your mama
mrs. gallawa, in all honesty this is amazing. i advise you to print this out and stick it in a book or a photo album and then show your girls all of your articles about them when they turn 18 and they will just love you all the more, i know i would have loved something like that, plus its special-er on paper (:
ReplyDeleteDammit, now I'm crying.
ReplyDeleteI'm so, so sorry. I'm not going to try and cheer you up, because it just plain sucks. Even in the best circumstances, it sucks to leave your babies when you don't want to.
I wish you could stay home with them forever and ever, or at least until you fired yourself. I'll be thinking of you Tuesday. Xoxo
I still get what I call the 3pm "itch". I can get into work, I can start to feel useful. But then like a clock, at around 1pm I start to think about her, and by 3pm i'm fairly useless because I just want to be home cuddling...
ReplyDeleteI cried reading this!!
ReplyDeleteYou said it perfectly and that is how I felt/feel about going to work. I always thought I wanted to be a working mom and then when Hudson was born that all changed. I would do anything to stay home with him, but we just cant do that.
It does get easier (as in you don't cry), but you still want to be with your little ones more than anything!! I'll be thinking about you this week!!
I'll be thinking about you tomorrow!
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