Little Leave Takings

Julie has been thinking lately about the little leave takings that mark the days when one has kids and works outside the home. There are other leave takings to come, everything from sleep-away camp to college, that for now remain bridges to cross on other days.  But as she was working outside the home before Joe and Clara were born and didn't stop once they were, a bridge she's crossed many times is the one that ends with her leaving Joe and Clara in someone else's care while she's at that other work.  She's never felt conflicted about her choice to work outside the home after she became a mother the way she knows some parents--mothers, really--are.  She has learned though that her comfort with the choice doesn't mean that some days it isn't still hard to let go of Joe and Clara's little bodies and walk out of their respective schools, to leave them. 

Clara, especially, still has a hard time parting on weekdays, at least when Julie drops her off.  But, quite by accident, Julie has discovered something that makes the leaving a little less hard for  her, and perhaps for Clara.  Many days, Clara will cry, "I want to stay home with you."  On one such day, Julie replied, "Me, too," and there she was in a moment in which she still felt sad, but a little less so, because she was in it with Clara. There was something about acknowledging that she wanted to stay home with Clara and would miss her, something about acknowledging the leaving and allowing the moment to be, that made it less hard to part.

For Care, new to leaving for other work.