A recent post by one of our favorite bloggers, Brooke Foster, the mom behind Mommy Moi.
Today was my last day of work at the HuffPost/Aol. It’s odd to leave work by choice. I wasn’t laid off or fired; I was simply done. It was bittersweet. I was leaving a company that was entirely different from when I started two years before, when the morning coffee was served with a spoonful of optimism.
Still, I had been looking forward to my last day for weeks. When I approached the glass elevators at Aol for the last time, I couldn’t get outside fast enough. I pushed through the revolving doors, inhaled the warm spring air, and felt giddy. I was free. I stood at the corner of St. Marks and 9th, turning 360 degrees to take it all in–the rushing crowd, the sun streaming in between the buildings, the grand architecture of 770 Broadway. I snapped a photo.
Then I said goodbye–not to anyone in particular, but to a time. It was like watching the end of one chapter in my life–and the beginning of another. It was time to go home.
As the commuter train I was riding made its way out of the city, I felt like I was leaving a part of myself behind. I had spent the last 14 years living in various East Coast cities, chasing the next big story, another fancy job title, applying for awards, writing books. I was exactly who I wanted to be professionally, and living the life that I always imagined.
But something–well, everything–changed when I had Harper. I didn’t have any interest in becoming a super mom. I just wanted to be a happy mom.
I sprinted back to work when Harper was three months old. I was terrified by all of the changes he brought, how unlike myself I felt caring for him. I was desperate to feel “normal.” Work made me feel more like myself. While I didn’t recognize the person changing dirty diapers and rocking a baby in a car seat (just so he would sleep), I could so easily slip back into laboring over a well-written sentence or a clever headline.
Slowly, over the next several months, I changed. I fell in love with being a mother. I still loved journalism, but I also got used to quiet days spent alone with a baby, and the joy that comes in watching your baby learn to crawl, communicate and show affection. I longed to stay at home.
I’m not really walking away from my career. I’ll continue writing this blog, and I have a babysitter to care for Harper one or two days a week so I can freelance for magazines and websites. Still, I’m no longer working for anyone in particular, and work is an identity in itself. Today, I was stripped of all of that.
And so there I was, stepping off a commuter train with a stream of suits, boarding a shuttle to my neighborhood, passing grand Victorians and center hall colonials. I climbed the porch stairs of my new house. Harper heard my footsteps and called out to me.
When I stepped in his room, he ran into my arms. He was in a diaper with his hair still wet from his bath. We snuggled for a moment. Then he was picking up his monitor, holding it to his ear and saying “Eh?” (It’s his version of hello.)
The day melted away. And that is how a baby reduces a parent to pure happiness: In an instant.
Brooke Foster is a New York City Mom of one. She blogs at Mommy Moi.
