(After having just a precious 2 days with my beloved laptop, there is a problem with the new hard drive they put in, so once again, I must bring it in to the shop.  Things have been so crazy, yeah its crazy being poor and sick!, I have had to reschedule twice; Im thinking Friday now. Anyway, I am writing this post on my husbands laptop.  His has a possessive/quote key that works about 25% of the time.  As he is a professional writer I do not know how he can stand this, but there it is.  I write this to let people know that my grammar and editing are much better than it would appear. Thank you.)

How time flies.  I would never believe that it would be the night before my sons graduation…from pre-school. If you have never had any children you are probably laughing your head off right now, if you do have kids you are nodding and smiling, either of the memories or of the anticipation. I remember being childless and thinking these pre-school or kindergarten graduations were utterly ridiculous!  And yet now presents are coming in through the mail, and guests are coming to see my four-and-a-half-year-old perform a program in song and in sign language for his graduation in his cap and gown.

Tyler has certainly put in his time. He has been in daycare or school since he was seven-and-a-half-months old.  When I got too sick to work, when Tyler was a year-and-a-half-old, I kept him in daycare, as I was too sick to care for him as well. Through these four years, I struggled mightily with the guilt I had.  A woman staying home full-time, not working at all, and having her child in daycare full-time?  It just wasnt right, what was she doing all day? How could she do this to her child?  But I just couldnt take care of Tyler, could not entertain him, could not teach him things, could not even take him to the park.  I needed my days, to rest and sleep, to be in pain, to scream, to cry, to shake in my bed, frozen, when my Anxiety wouldnt let me leave it.

Most days Grant would take him to and from school but on the days when I would drop Tyler off, especially in the earlier years, I would run out of there crying, wondering if I was doing the right thing and feeling like a total waste of space.  I was a stay at home…what?  A sick person?

I finally came to terms with it, reasoning that if I was working full-time, Tyler would be in full-time daycare anyway.  And I hope through this blog that I helped other women come to terms with it as well, helping them through the feeling that they were failing their children, surrendering them to some other woman who might catch their childs first step or first pee pee in the potty, or the first time they wrote their name.  Helping them to realize, along with my own realization, that yes, they were turning them over to someone else, but that they needed that time, because just like any working mother, they were still going to be the ones responsible for bathing them, feeding them, changing them and more, and while the well moms worked, the sick moms slept, so we could be the moms our children needed us to be. Or, as I tell Tyler, Mommy needs to nap so she can wake up and be Super Mommy again.

But tomorrow Tyler will graduate from his school, never to set foot in there again and he will start his first real Summer vacation, with some camps here and there but mostly home.  And in September he will start big boy school, kindergarten.

And over the summer he will forget his teachers, has already forgotten the ones from when he was nine months old, and a year-and-a-half, and two.  And in the end there will be only one woman he will remember, the woman who got him ready for school every day and made him dinner every night and put him to bed with stories and games and talking.  The woman he kissed good morning to and the last woman he would say Sweet Dreams to.

In the end, there will only be…Mommy.