Fallen Leaves and Mother Guilt

Lone Star Pa told me a story about when he and the Lone Star Baby were playing outside while the Lone Star Girl and I were at the movie yesterday. He said that she noticed all the leaves on the ground and was talking about them, so he told her they had fallen off the trees. She then started exclaiming Oh, no! Oh, no! and trying to stick them back onto the trees. He explained that the brown and yellow ones were supposed to fall off and that only the green ones were supposed to be on the trees and she eventually settled down.

Lone Star Pa and the Lone Star Girl had few such solitary interludes when she was a baby. When I was not at work, she was always with me. I think I saw one movie without her (one of the Star Wars re-releases) before she was four years old. Many mothers have much more time with their babies than I am allowed, but when a mother must work away from them as much as I must, I do not think there is really any room for other separations in the earliest years. There just isn't enough time. And yet...the Lone Star Baby has spent several periods of time away from me when I was not at work, many it sometimes seems.

My feelings haven't really changed. It's just that I have two daughters, now. It's difficult. While I firmly believe that the early years are the very most crucial time in a person's emotional development and while that belief of mine causes the Lone Star Baby's need for time with me to trump everything else the vast majority of the time when I am not at work...it doesn't really do to deprive a blossoming pre-teen girl of one-on-one time with her mother either, you know? So I have had to compromise, as we all have to all the time, I know...but still. It feels at those times when I carve out some alone time for my older child that while it is right and necessary for her, it is wrong and harmful for the baby. Children are resilient, of course. I am doing the best I can do, of course. It troubles me, though...it really, really does.