Crossroads

I was driving home from yoga, the practice still resonating like a humming vibration of resolve within me when I saw a shooting star burning across the sky through my windshield.  I wished without thinking: a baby... Surprised, I caught myself, shook my head side to side as if to erase the old wish ingrained in my heart from what is practically a lifetime ago, and sputtered direction and happiness, is what I meant.  A sense of direction and happiness.  Is it odd that I have this reflex of wishing for a baby as if I were still struggling with infertility?  Old habits die hard, I guess.  So my true wish was for direction and happiness in my career, because truth be told, I've got both in my personal life and none whatsoever in my work life.  So I wished on that giant ball of something burning through the atmosphere more for fun than belief that it meant anything, and drove on home.

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The phone rang while I was opening the mailbox.  Caller ID said it was my weekend job calling.  The girls were in the car listening to Christmas music.  I tapped on the glass.  They waved through the tinted window and stretched against their car seat belts to remind me my time was limited.  I answered the phone.   A job offer for more work.  With decent pay.  And NICU specialization training.  They really need the help.  Could I consider it?

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I took my first job out of school based on money.  We were so poor.  Cristian was going back to graduate school, and we wanted to buy a house.  I didn't know then the repercussions of taking a job just for sheer financial incentive, but I learned quickly.  It wasn't long before I quit that job and landed another similar one.  I looked for other jobs, but the ones that sparked the flicker of interest within me didn't pay near what I was already making, required lots of out of pocket expenses for continuing education, and our finances could never justify the cut.  There was always something to pay for: a car in the shop, an infertility treatment, graduate school tuition, a baby, then another.  And now, 7 years later, I'm still making excuses. 

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I can't even fathom what it must be like to truly love my job.  I'm skeptical of other people that say they love theirs.  My husband is one of them, lucky dog.  Some days I kinda like my job, but most of the time I'm counting down the minutes until I can come home again, hardly ever even stopping to run errands on the way back for missing my girls.  The brutal truth of it is that I'm afraid of the kind of example I will set for them if this is the example they are given.  How can I tell them to reach high if I won't do it myself?

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I wished upon a star on a hot August night as I sat on the back porch with Eve during her witching hour and caught a light blazing across the horizon. A shooting star.  I was home then.  My maternity leave extending months and months in front of me.  I was so lucky.  I wished on that star that I could stay home with the girls for as long as I wanted.  I wished it hard, then lowered my eyes onto my newborn daughter, well knowing it was not to be.

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Direction in my career path.  A chance at career happiness and specialization.  A baby, not mine, but nevertheless babies!  The honor to love and assist many, many precious babies born too soon and thriving even so.  That's what they offered me. 

But it's at the cost of working more, of missing more days with my girls, of juggling work schedules between me and Cristian as we continue the tag team parenting that exhausts us. 

I asked for this, didn't I?  Wished for it.  All of it.  But I can't have it all.  I'll regret leaving the loves of my life as I walk out the door for work 4 days a week.   I'll regret not taking the job I'd love for the one that has me treading water in frustration.  Something has to give.

I know what I should choose for my family. 
I know what I should choose for me. 
Why must the best choice for each be down different roads?