One son wasn’t having a great day, and her mom instincts kicked in. She knew he needed her to be at that party. She felt bad for missing her own fun, but she admitted that her ‘working mom guilt’ had gotten the best of her. It turned out, she was absolutely correct – her son needed her. But still she felt guilty for following her gut, even though she was right where she should have been.
Stay-at-home parents aren’t exempt from this guilt about time allocation. Do my kids spend too much time with me? Am I coddling them? Will they live in the basement forever? This last fear haunts my husband most of all, I think.
Recently my younger son cried at the end of a Cinderella-type book, when the new bride rides away (assumedly happily) with the Prince.
Clearly distraught, “When do I have to get married and leave you?” he sobbed. “I just want to stay with you forever!”
I thought back to that first trip home, how he’d kicked the sock off of his impossibly tiny foot; how I wanted to protect him forever and ever. My heart ached at the thought of him and his brother growing and moving away, even though that would be many, many years in the future, and despite that being the ultimate goal of raising children.
Not for a long time, I assured him, holding him close. “We will all be together for a long, long time.”
For now we’ll try to do everything we can to prepare our sons to take on their own adventures. We’ll be there for them as needed, and hang back, albeit reluctantly, as is necessary for us both to succeed and grow. We’ll manage our parental guilt and pray that our instincts will guide us through. In the end I can only hope that my boys will be resilient travelers on the road of life.
By then, perhaps we’ll all be ready to go.