LAST DAY
Sold my red horse
for a venture home
To vanish on the bow
Settling slow
- Lump Sum, Bon Iver
It was raining when I left the office on my last day of work. The power had flickered off for a brief instant, giving everyone a thrilling startle in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. At the back entrance, I chuckled with the guard about the automatic doors not working due to the outage as we pushed open the manual ones instead. In my arms I carried a box with the remains of my goodbye cake - almond mocha - and a bag of assorted desk items. Among the items was my office name plate; silver metal printed with my maiden name.
“Maybe one day I’ll show this to my son, and he’ll be interested to hear about his Mama’s life before he was born,” I told my boss. It’s the kind of thing I would have been curious about. You grow up thinking of your parents as your parents, an identity which feels all-encompassing. It’s strange to put any other name for them in your mouth, like something which doesn’t taste quite right, and stranger still to think of your mother as someone with an entirely different last name than the one she has now.
I got in my car and began to make the long, rainy drive to my parent’s house to pick up my son. I remembered hearing a woman say that a little thing she missed about not having kids was being able to turn the radio up loud whenever she wanted, so I picked a station and cranked up the volume. The music filling the car was a slight release for all the emotions I was carrying. A part of me was sad to leave my job. It was the one I got when returning to the states from Ecuador. I had walked into the interview unsure if I wanted it, even while putting my most professional foot forward in heels, a pencil skirt, and a brand-new white button-down shirt. When I left the interview, I was certain it was the job for me. My skill set was a strong match, yet I’d be learning a lot too. Not long after, it was officially mine.
I enjoyed working in the state office and seeing behind the scenes of how things were run. Having steady employment throughout the pandemic was a relief. I clicked well with the people there, with some of them becoming close friends. They celebrated me when I became engaged, when I returned from my honeymoon, and when I became pregnant. In that role, I learned and grew and was valued. Leaving a place like that was hard … yet I knew that leaving my son each day would be even harder. On that drive home, I thought about how I was trading lunches in restaurants with coworkers for round-the-clock feedings and baby talk. A professional wardrobe for one which could handle spit-up and the twisting of small fingers. Yet, for any of the work recognitions or freedoms I’d no longer have there were a thousand moments with my baby I’d trade them for in a heartbeat. Some women need to have a job outside the home for their own wellbeing, including many of my coworkers who knew that staying home simply wasn’t for them. Everyone’s needs and situations are different, so following through with them is what is important.
I picked up my baby and drove us home. That night, with the relics of my job put away as memorabilia, my husband cradled me as I cradled our baby and told me gently, “You’re such a good Mom.”
”Thank you,” I whispered. It was the role I was meant to embody. There are difficult days, tedious and long, yet there is no place I’d rather be than caring for our baby. I’m sure of it.
