Mom Enough

"Oh, you're back!"

Caroline coined this Caroline-characteristic phrase a couple months ago. She started saying it when I would return home or just when I would pop out of my office to say hi to her and her sister. Jacqueline caught on a couple weeks later, a typical lag time from our alpha to beta twin. Caroline would start, 'oh you're back!', and Jacqueline, in her more diminutive voice, would echo, "you're back!"

'You're back' is colored with their beautiful little smiles, a running charge to their mama, and a hug. No hugs. And their sweet little, heavenly hugs can right all wrongs, cure all ills, make a trip to West Virginia seem like distant history. 

As I reflect on their clear-as-day message to me, it means one simple thing: that I've been gone. And arguably too much. I've been gone from them, from many kids' activities, from a Wolfpack Pup meeting that Margaret did not let me live down last Thursday, from homework help, piano instruction, dinners, and bedtime routines. I've been immersed in work that's taken me to some of the finest towns in the continental United States: Ripley, West Virgina, Caldwell, Ohio, Winchester, Kentucky, Oil City, Pennsylvania. Name the low household income, former manufacturing town in the coal belt of the country, I've probably been there. 

New city, new school, new job, bigger new job, more travel, more time away, now more 'Mommy, you're back" moments.  

As much as I've worked though, I've rationalized that when I'm home, I've been fully present, fully engaged in the most important things. 

Mary's tenth birthday.  

Continued explorations of our new city

         

Our ski trip out west for Spring Break. 

Easter celebrations. 

Margaret's kindergarten play where she played a pig who sang, 'ham it up!' and taking her to the Tech fair to celebrate a job well done. 

Erin's baby shower. 

Bobby's first communion.  

  

Mary's piano recital. 

Scooting around the block with the twins, eating dinner with them piled on my lap, reading and then rocking them to sleep as many nights as possible. 

Loving and loving and loving them all. Hugging and hugging and hugging them all. I tell them I can't hug them enough, the embraced moments always too fleeting. 

Despite the energy I exhaust on both sides of my life, the give it my all mindset that exemplifies how I work and how I mother, I anxiously go to bed every night wondering have I done enough for everyone that needs me? 

Of course not. I couldn't have. I'll skip to it, I didn't. There aren't enough hours in the day. So, Peter's taken on the majority of stuff I used to do. He's got the practice, I'm there for the final performances. I don't cook any more, barely clean, don't wash or dry or fold the laundry of a 7-person household, I don't make the doctor appointments, I don't take them. I don't love the traditional motherly duties, but it's felt uncomfortable and efeminating to take a step back from them. And my heart asks, does not doing them, and does being away make me less of a mom? Less of a wife?   

As I sat in the Newark airport, en route to London on Sunday night, these were my thoughts. Scurrying through my head marinated with a couple of tears. 

Two days into my week-long leadership training course in London, my convenient conclusion is that my pursuit of reaching senior leadership at my company, while attempting to be the best mother and spouse I can be isn't all wrong. And outside of the guilt I felt when leaving on Sunday, I'm generally very happy playing both of the demanding roles in my life. God gave me a lot of energy, and I'm expending it. I also look at Mary's mature helpfulness, Bobby's resilience, Margaret's selfless love, and the Twins happy go lucky tone when they say, 'you're back' and believe their character tells me I'm or rather we are doing something right. 

As I look ahead to celebrating Mother's Day, back home, with my family this weekend, I am filled with gratitude for my husband. Caring for and keeping the kids in a centered state of mind is the only way I'm able to do my job. He's the one who empowers me and emboldens me to be my own, wandering definition of a mom each day. And I'm ever appreciative for that, rooted in his love for me. 

More tales from London when I recommit to being a blogger on the plane ride home. 

Lo.