Old Guilt

On Saturday my friend Deborah and I were reminiscing about the difficulties of folding children into a career and the inevitable guilt we took on as we did it. Fortunately our children seem to have survived just fine, but we both have memories of being stretched beyond belief sometimes.

First of all, there never seemed to be just the right time to start a family as I was climbing the professional ladder in my job that required me to travel internationally multiple times a year. I knew embracing motherhood was tantamount to putting my career track on hold.

I was able to work part time for 5 years, but there was still the need to travel from time to time. I would have to invite my mother to come up from Florida to take care of my family during those work trips.

When I finally bit the bullet and applied for a job that would be a promotion and would also be full-time, I got it. But the first week of my new job, my husband had a mandatory class and my daughter had chicken pox. So guess who stayed home!

It seemed that taking care of sick children was the thing we had the greatest disagreements about back then. I recall once hiring an 85-year-old woman to come to the house, only to later learn that my 4-year-old daughter had had to make her own lunch in the microwave. Talk about guilt!

I can also remember getting that call from the school nurse’s office that my child had a fever and needed to be picked up. Inevitably it was just as I was going into an important meeting.

But eventually they grew up and were self-sufficient, rarely sick, and certainly not in need of daycare. Those early days have become blurry, but I can still conjure up the feelings of guilt as someone needed me at home and I thought I was needed at work. It’s a feeling that just stays with you.