A Mother's Moment

Change is change, whether good or bad. And although one of the aspects of my career is to help businesses make changes gracefully, I suppose it's good to be reminded from time to time that change is not easy.

Over the past couple of weeks we've been transitioning from a full-time nanny to care for our two girls back to a daycare situation. We literally could not have survived Anne Marie's first year of life without this guardian angel/saint, and yet for a variety of reasons we had to come to the realization that our needs and situation has changed, and so back to daycare it is.

As with every change, there are pros and cons. One of the biggest cons is saying goodbye to my weekly "Appointments" with Edie.

For the past few months, around lunch time a few days per week, Edie would stop in for tea. Sometimes it was truly just a cup of tea, and she would practice sipping with pinky extended.

 
 
Sometimes it was more elaborate, with cucumber sandwiches and perhaps some strawberries or grapes.


 
 
A large plastic storage container covered by a large-ish tea towel has served as our tea table. We sit on the floor and talk about what's happening at kindergarten, or how many days until Christmas, or what we should have for dinner, or how smelly Edward's dog breath is. Ewwwww!
 
 
After a first experiment with tea sandwiches and the 5-year-old stamp of approval, cucumber sandwiches had been making more appearances lately.
 
 
And, of course, we could not forget the sugar cubes. Often, we even brought out the "Special" sugars by Chambre de Sucre.
 
 
These appointments were never very long. 15 minutes or so. She always asked for one of two teas:  Persian Princess or Two Tigers. Her ratio of tea to milk was about 1:3. I taught her the joys of dunking cookies in her tea.
 
And now, things have changed.
 
Now I drop the girls off in the early morning and drive home to an empty house where I dive into work. There's no special appointment to break up my day. I have to wait until work is over before I get to hear about anything interesting that may have occurred on the playground. And while all of that is fine, I realize I'll have to work just a little harder to make time for these little moments. They're worth it.
 
 

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