Bye Bye Eppy

I suppose it is probably something your friends with children warn you about before you have a child. But you listen about as much as you listen when they tell you that you’ll never sleep again and that you’ll eventually let your toddler watch TV and that you won’t mind when your son eats cheerios off the garage floor after you finally manage to wrestle him from his car seat at the end of a long day. You do not hear it when your friends with children say “Enjoy your non-mommy friends now because they will disappear after you have kids.” You know that all the predictions that other moms make about your parenting and your child will not matter because for you it will be different. You will not buy a mini-van. You will not cave in and give your child what he wants when he throws a tantrum in the middle of the candy aisle. You will not bring your child into your bed in the middle of the night just because he is demanding it. And you will not lose touch with all your friends that don’t have children.

Oh how I wish that were true.

Tonight when I picked up Sam, the entrance to the daycare was chaos. One mommy stood in the doorway to avoid dragging her mud-and-slush-covered boots onto the carpet. Her youngest (and fifth) child rested on her hip while she barked at the others to hurry up and get their coats on. A father stood outside on the porch waiting for his two boys as they dug through piles of snowpants to find their coats. Jamie’s own daughter, the one child at the daycare who has the right to call Jamie “mommy” even though many of them do, chased Sam into a corner and screamed. Sam held her clear plastic purse filled with pink hairstyling materials and said “Mine. Mine. Mine.” I fed his free hand through one sleeve and then uncurled his grip and gave the bag to Ayanna. As I picked him up and held him next to the other Mommy, he reached out his hand to the tiniest child in the house and said “Bye-bye Eppy. Bye bye.”

I love my life filled with magna doodles and alphabet blocks and books with pictures of trucks. I love watching Sam eat an entire serving of lasagna in two minutes with just a third of it finding its final resting place on his lap or in his hair. I love dancing around the living room to “5 Days Old” and “Down on Leah’s Farm” and “Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer.” I love having my index finger grabbed by his small hand as he leads me to the living room and pats the couch cushion and says “Mama sit” after I’ve spent too much time away from him sorting laundry. I love singing “Noodles and cheese, noodles and cheese, noodles and cheese” all the way home at the end of the day to keep Sam focused on what lies ahead rather than the friends he has left behind at daycare.

Before Sam was born, before he was even conceived, a married friend of mine with children was complaining about having no time for her own hobbies, for her love of horses and the way she used to spend hours with them riding and training. And I told her she had to make time for herself, she shouldn't deny herself something that was so important to her, something that brought her so much joy. Back then I didn't understand. In the same way that I didn't understand that I would some day not have time for my writing.

I love my life and the things that Sam and i have in front of us, but it turns out all those mommies I wasn’t listening to were right. Some days I do miss my non-mommy friends and no amount of singing about noodles and cheese can keep me from looking in my rear view mirror and wishing they were here.