The Working Mom

I am on-call every Wednesday night and one weekend a month. Sometimes it's quiet, sometimes it's nutty. Tonight being on-call meant that I was worked 12 hours straight, in the office until 8:30 pm. I warned Michael that I'd be home really late, and he sent me sweet pictures of Oliver and the evening they were having together. "Give him kisses from his Mommy," I texted from my desk. "I'm not going to make it back before his bed time." I missed my boy.

A few minutes later, I received a voice mail from Michael. I could hear Ollie's sweet heavy breath into the receiver. "Tell Mommy what you did!" Michael ecouraged. "Do it, tell her!"

"Nananaducka!" Ollie answered.

"That's right!" Michael exclaimed. "You took four steps. Four steps!"

I hung up my phone and hung my head, dropping tears into a tissue. He took real steps, four of them, and I missed it. Blotting my face for running mascara as I heard the janitor enter the office, I texted gushing replies somewhere along the lines of "Mommy's so proud, what a big boy!"

I couldn't shake the fact that Ollie took his first real, purposeful steps when I was working late. How many milestones like this would I be missing while I'm at work? After those sad, sad first weeks back from maternity leave, I committed to not focusing on the percentage of the day that Oliver spends away from me and Michael. But moments like these that find me sniffling in front of a laptop, three phones and a pile of papers are hard to ignore.

In truth, maybe Oliver took real steps at daycare today. He probably has a lot of firsts there. But when he comes home, it's the first time that he does them for us. So I'll end the day here, finally at home, so proud of my son, excited to see the first steps that he takes on his own into my arms.