Just One Night

These weeks I am gone all day on Thursday. I leave around 11 a.m. and return around 10:30 p.m. when everyone is asleep. I come into the dark house wired and tired and chow down on any leftovers I can find--snorting it all down like a starving wild animal because I am so hungry!!

But here is what my Thursday journeys have taught me. As much as I gripe (on bad days) about my lack of career, focus and time, as much as I muse about the crazy paradox of motherhood (wanting to work, wanting to be home) when I am actually away from my children all day, when I do not see them, feed them, bathe them, read to them or tuck them into bed, I miss them in a deep, profound way that startles me.

I wake up the next day feeling slightly disconnected. And grateful that I can be with them again.

And I know, that for all my temporary dissatisfactions, and frustrations with not being able to do more for myself, there is nowhere, NOWHERE I would rather be each day than with them.

This is good for me to know.