Change and Constancy
Now that Beatrice is a year old I’m noticing a few things have changed around here. The biggest change? She wants to walk around ALL THE TIME. She is not walking independently yet, so this means our fingers are attached to her hands for balance and reassurance while she is walking. It also means that my back is hunched over and many of my wants and needs are going unmet while we are walking, because she protests any attempts to disengage my fingers by throwing herself onto the ground and wailing. I know this is a short-lived phase, and before I know it she will be walking around everywhere by herself and I will be running along behind her making sure she isn’t getting into things she shouldn’t. But I am getting a very sore back, and I’m starting to think it wasn’t such a good idea to quit yoga.
Most other moms with babies the same age as Beatrice have started going back to work, and I’m noticing that the ages at the baby drop in group have suddenly shifted. Most moms with babies a year old don’t come to the group any more, and there are now more babies around the 6-10 month age group. Predictably, this has revived my anxiety about having huge gaps in my resume, missing out on a career and finding value and stimulation in my life while spending my days fighting our fruit fly infestation and walking around the house with the baby 40 times a day.
Yesterday I was talking with a friend, who happens to be a fiction writer, and she was saying that she is looking forward to going back to work part time, just to get out of the house and have a bit of variety. She said that she has a very low tolerance for the mundane, and finds motherhood to be full of it. It’s true: motherhood is, on the day to day level, full of dropped raisins and sticky hands, reading The Gruffalo from memory and living one day the same as the next. Of course, on another level motherhood is profoundly magical and meaningful, and it is a miracle to watch this little person unfurl from the tiny seed they once were. But the dirty sippy cups and temper tantrums tend to obscure the magic in the daily experience of motherhood.
I don’t know if going back to work would really fix this feeling of anxiety and restlessness I have. It’s the same feeling I had when I was working on the phones or slinging coffees and donuts. There is more to life than this. I am missing out.
It is the fear of missing out that is the root of my anxiety, I think. I am afraid I am going to miss my calling. I am afraid that everyone else is going to have a profession and I won’t. I feel sure there is some meaningful career out there in my future, but I can’t see what it is or how I will get there. I can see glimpses occasionally. I imagine myself sitting in my ideal office, doing my ideal work, which usually involves a room with a view and a beautiful oak desk, writing something powerful and important. But how do I get there?
And then I blink and look around myself. I am sitting at an oak table, looking out at the trees in my backyard, the tiny sliver of mountain view and the construction site next door. I am writing my thoughts as they come. Maybe the view isn’t worth a million dollars and the words aren’t going to change the world, but it’s a room with a view and I’m writing.
The challenge, I think, is to find meaning and value in my daily life, no matter what that daily life is. I am in this particular situation because I made certain choices in the past. I made those choices for a reason, because there is value in what I chose. It is when I forget about the original choice that I start to get itchy feet and fantasize about skipping along to the next thing, the thing that is going to make my life perfect and fulfilling in every way. But in reality it is much harder to stick with my choice and see it through to the end, to keep working away even when it gets boring and mundane. To be still but not stagnant.
