All my doubts about what I’m doing with my life are swept away when I look at her.
A thick, curly ponytail bounces at the back of her head, decorated with a cheerful and audacious yellow sunflower clip. Her slender ankles carry strong legs into school, her eyes lighting up at the sight of her friends and her teacher.
She wakes in the morning with my name on her lips, creeping into my room as the morning sun tilts the shadows this way and that. In the crook of my arm she snuggles, giggling softly as she teases her father.
She loves me the best, she tells me. I am her best friend, she says.
Last week I held my cool palm against her hot forehead, thinking about what the doctor told us as we left the urgent care clinic.
“No school, no daycare for at least 24 hours after she starts the antibiotic,” she instructed.
On the way home those words echoed in my head. Leaning over to kiss her flushed cheek, I laid my face against hers.
“The best thing I ever did was decide to stay home with you, my love,” I said to my daughter. “Nothing, nothing in this world, is as important as being with you every day.”
I met my husband’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“It was the right thing to do,” I said. ” I can’t believe I ever agonized over it.”
I turned back to my child.
“You are the most important thing in the world to me, you and your brother,” I told her. “You are the most important work I will ever do in this life.”
And I mean it with all my heart and soul.
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Print this out and tape it to your fridge for those moments when you doubt yourself.
This motherhood thing gives us dual personalities doesn’t it? There are good days like this one, and then there are days like the other. When the bad days go away we can appreciate the good like never before.
She is so incredibly adorable…
I never wanted kids, and yet many days, it feels so amazingly right…
Absolutely. There are times I pine to get dressed up and get back on the train into the city…get a paycheck and some feedback and feel like I’m making some kind of contribution. There are days I want to run screaming from my house.
But then there are the days I know I’ve made the right decision, and all the memories we’ve made together at home are worth way more than the frustration, which will finally ebb away until all I remember is the fun and lightness, and my intense love for them.
Beautiful. Absolutely perfect and beautiful.
I guess the bottom line is that it’s lovely to spend the day with someone who considers you their best friend.
What a sweet post! And she is a cutie too!
perfectly put friend.
exactly
hard to question it when you look at that face.
Amen, fellow Mama, amen.
Perfectly said. On days when my little one is at her worst, I just think, at least I am lucky enough to be able to stay home with her.
This was so lovely. Just like the wee Poo.
Beautiful post. I can definitely relate.
In the middle of our adoption journey, we had to face a panel of 20-odd specialists in various fields.
We effectively won them all over when I said something similar to you – “the children will become the reason to get out of bed on those mornings when you really don’t want to…”
We hear their cries in the night and snap out of sleep in a way you cannot describe to those without children. Something gets hard wired into your brain…
This post is the ultimate truth. Thanks for writing it.
They’re both very lucky!