the bad and ugly

I guess for some people raising their children in a way that coincides with character and morals and the "right thing" is an option. For me, it is not. But I am getting ahead of myself. And to tell the story correctly, I need to go back to my group meeting this morning. As I do not want to get fired, there will be no names, no identifying details to come back and haunt me, nothing to google and get dragged into someone's office about my online antics. In the meeting, my boss told us about a program at work that began as a counseling program and has recently expanded to offer additional services. She gave examples such as these people finding you a plumber or tracking down a medical specialist, all so you don't have to "take up valuable work time with errands and chores." And, without missing a beat, she said that in the case when your child is too sick to go to daycare, they can find a licensed nanny to stay at home "so you don't have to stay home with important work to be done in the office. You only need to wait for the nanny to show up and lose an hour of work instead of the whole day."

I knew who she was talking about. Hell, everyone knew who she was talking about. She was talking about the one whose child has had a string of ear infections and stomach viruses and runny cruddy noses and random fevers and teething pain. She was talking about the one who took hours off of work to take her to the doctor, to rock her to sleep, to comfort her pain with a tight hug and snuggle; the one who stayed up nights to make sure her child wasn't too clogged up to breathe, who left work at a moment's notice to pick her up. The one who came into work at 5:00 in the morning, at night, on the weekends, to make that time up. She was talking about me and we all knew it.

I've never shown such composure. Every fiber of my being wanted to jump up from that conference table and scream, "I didn't have a baby to pawn her off on a stranger when she's at her weakest, her neediest, her most vulnerable. She is not your child. YOU do not get to think she's fine with a nanny. YOU do not get to judge my parenting. YOU were not the one losing your mind because your child couldn't tell you your breastmilk was making her sick. YOU are not the one who was so overwhelmed with her baby's cries for hours and weeks and months on end that you thought not having her at all was a better option. YOU don't know how it feels to to cure colic, only to be sideswiped with ear infection after ear infection. YOU ARE INCORRECT IN YOUR ASSUMPTION THAT THERE IS A CHOICE BETWEEN MY BABY AND THIS JOB."

But I didn't because I need my paycheck and frankly, I wasn't believing what I was hearing.

I went back to my cubicle and told my friend, "She can go to hell." And I mean that with all my heart. I won't apologize for taking care of my daughter, for throwing work out the window when it comes to her health, and for gladly putting my 50-hour work week second, third, even fourth when it comes to my family. At the end of the day, I know how much of myself I have given in exchange for a paycheck, how much of my baby's life I am missing to be at work, how little I get in return for what I give up.

So I walked away today, from the issue not the job. But it will never look as shiny and as new and as pretty as it once did. Tarnish is hard, if not impossible, to simply scrub away.