I have decided that guilt is a constant theme in my life and rather than try to resist it, I am going to embrace it. My entire cellular structure is pre-programmed with generations of Italian-Catholic guilt neurons so who am I to try and deny evolution?
Let’s start with the general life phases of guilt. First, there is sibling guilt, as in “I probably shouldn’t have convinced my youngest brother that he is adopted just because mom has no pictures.” Then there is school guilt of “I really should have started that paper before midnight due to the fact that my parents pay for me to go to this lovely private school.” I was a do-gooder in the homework department, so I stole that one from our eldest daughter.
The pattern of guilt continues until you hit the all consuming pinnacle, MOM guilt. This particular type of guilt starts the second your first child is born and assumedly ends when you take your last breath. What follows is my journey to date and the corresponding guilt rating, 10 being the highest:
First daughter is born and I return to work full-time. (10)
Second daughter is born and I return to work part-time. (6)
We move to London and I finally get to be an at-home mom. (0)
After two months, I am bored to tears of being an at-home mom. (7)
I decide to have third child to fill up free time. (2)
Third child never sleeps and is all consuming so the girls
are virtually ignored. (9)
Decide to have fourth child but the third is still all consuming so now
I have to hire a nanny to handle the above-mentioned third child. (5)
Several years of exhaustion follow. (0)
Exhaustion ebbs but when I wake up I discover that I have two children in private school during a terrible recession and I still have a nanny. (8)
My blog is one day late. (11)
So here I am, six weeks after I decided to go back to work, building two businesses of my own and creating sales opportunities for a wonderful outside company. I am obviously incapable of doing anything on a small scale. The guilt opportunities exist aplenty.
I know Danielle is really happy at school in Scotland, but I know little else. Our second daughter is having a heck of a junior year between her workload and her health issues and I wish I could take her pain away and make it mine. The seventh grader doesn’t talk about his schoolwork and I probably should spend more time probing. The youngest has had a stomachache for three weeks and it only dawned on me today that it is probably due to the huge amount of medication he has to take for Lyme . My newest addition to the guilt pile? I often wish that I could be left alone and work 20 hours a day because I love what I am doing so much.
My youngest went to school yesterday despite his stomachache because I had an important meeting. I promised him that if he needed me, I would be back home at lunchtime.
My cell phone rang at exactly 12:15 and I didn’t even look to see who it was. I drove directly to the elementary school where my ten-year old was waiting for me. About a half-hour later he turned to me and told me how much he enjoyed my company. He then told me he noticed how happy I was these days and that simple fact made him happy, too. If my children can accept my new journey with such open hearts, why shouldn’t I?
So, wrap that guilt up and embrace it, lest you miss one minute of the joy that is always a minute ahead of us.