Motherhood, the identity crisis

Tomorrow I return to work. Yes, Sunday. I'm in the news business. We don't sleep. Until we have babies. And then they keep us awake. But anyways...

Tomorrow I work and I have mixed feelings.

It's not like I want to stay at home. Financially, it's impossible and metaphorically, it's not who I am.

I am a writer, a reporter and an award-winning journalist. That's the argument I give myself, of course. But the other half of my brain is not convinced.

So I argue further:

After college, I sojourned to the Great Big North in search of Great Big Headlines and a Great Big Career.

To not work slaps all those college interviews and late nights in the face, not to mention the face of destiny who led me here in the first place, if you believe such a thing exists.

Behind a notebook, college-ruled, hand-held or otherwise, is where I belong. It's what makes me, me.

But now I'm a mother/Cole's mom.

And he makes me who I am as well. And with the help of his father and some prenatal vitamins, I also made him.

He's brand new, but he too, defines me. If a day-care lady changes as many of his diapers as I do, how much of his mothering is really mine? And worse, what happens when he rolls over for her before me? What if she teaches him to speak, to read, to pee in a toilet? How many tears will fall if he prefers her care, to mine?

Motherhood is such an identity crisis.

For a girl who never liked to cook, now all I want to do is wake early to make a hot breakfast for my working husband, read books to my son and create Eiffel Towers out of Popsicle sticks.

I'd read, I'd blog, I'd spend too much time researching stain-removal, decorating for Columbus Day and gossiping about events and people I don't even know.

That's how I want to spend my life.

Right now anyway.

Check back when Cole wakes up.