these are the very words she uses to describe her life

I’m pretty sure that my former boss is a good man, but he has no idea how to break bad news to people.  You don’t just call a person on the Friday of her first week back from maternity leave, chattily ask about her life and how her ten-week-old baby is doing, react with seemingly heartfelt excitement when she answers, and then proceed to get all brusque and businesslike and “I have some bad news for you” out of the blue.  I mean, why the chattiness?  Why the smalltalk?  Why not just get straight to the point?

I love and hate nonprofits.  I love the work because it’s rewarding; I particularly loved adoption advocacy because it’s a personal cause, since I was adopted myself.  I love how, even in D.C., nonprofit organizations always felt just a tad more laidback and friendly than other workplaces.  I love the tiny number of employees, the staff lunches, the women who bring in homemade brownies and banana bread, the fact that the water cooler never went empty.  I love the sense of accomplishment that comes from trying to do great and mighty things, alongside people you consider friends, on the smallest budget imaginable.

But I hate feeling as though your job is never safe, regardless of your title or salary or importance, because a grant could evaporate overnight and there would be no way to pay you.  Which is exactly what happened to me, of course.  Huge Charitable Trust Which Shall Remain Nameless, which funded my organization to the tune of half a million a year or more, got a new director of something or other and decided to decrease our funding to almost nothing.  That grant paid a big chunk of my salary, as well as the salaries of several other employees.  Three of us had to be laid off, “for the survival of the organization.”

I got the news, once again, on my first Friday back from maternity leave, while the part-time babysitter I had hired to come help me care for the baby during working hours was out for an afternoon stroll with my daughter.  I finished that awful, disbelieving, soul-crushing conversation with my boss, hung up when I felt certain I would lose it, and had only about five minutes to pull myself together before the babysitter returned with Abigail.  Then I had to tell this very nice young woman – on the Friday of her first week of employment with us – that we had to let her go because we couldn’t pay her anymore. 

And then I had to go feed and change my daughter.  Life moves on awfully fast with a ten-week-old.

This was the Friday before my birthday.   I basically spent the weekend crying, feeling like a failure, and blaming myself for every bad thing I could grasp.  My husband patiently listened to all of this and did his best to cheer me up, and of course it helped to focus on Abigail, who makes me laugh without even trying.  When I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, Dan and I tried to figure out what to do.

Dan is a graduate student on a stipend; he doesn’t make enough for us to live on.  The obvious, logical step would be for me to go out and find a job as quickly as possible; forget about finding something rewarding, or meaningful, or even well-paid – any full-time salaried job with benefits would do.  But then, of course, we’d be looking at full-time day care for Abigail.  And, expense aside, while I’m not opposed to paid child care – lots of our friends use day care, and it works for them – I found that it just wasn’t what I wanted for Abby. 

Truthfully I had never considered it; I never had to.  I had the luxury of working a job I loved from home, albeit with regular business trips to D.C., and the situation didn’t require me making a decision to work or stay home.  With me working, we could afford part-time, in-home child care to make my work days a little easier, and I would still be here for nursing, naptime, and any emergencies.  We found a great babysitter.  My first week back at work seemed to go well, until that phone conversation.  In an instant I found myself jobless, panicked, picking up the pieces of what I thought had been The Perfect Plan.  And I had nothing, no backup plan to replace it with.

I didn’t have any answers.  I still don’t, except one, and I guess the most important – I asked myself if I was willing to leave Abby with a stranger all day, for any job, and (to my surprise) found that the answer was No.  Both Dan and I felt strange about it, particularly because she is still so young.  So then we took a long, hard look at our finances and expenses.  “If we really clamp down on spending and stick to a budget, we should be able to make it till I finish grad school, even if you don’t go back to work,” Dan concluded. 

So for right now, since we are not on the brink of starvation and we can still eat and pay our mortgage, I am staying home with my daughter.  I don’t know how long I’ll be home with her, honestly; it may be a few months, it may be a year, it may be forever.  Sometimes I still can’t believe we’re doing this, however long it ends up lasting.  Financial ruin pretty much tops Nikki’s Biggest Fears list, thanks to growing up in a family that was always short of cash.  I always swore I would never put myself in this position, I’d do whatever it took; I would have savings, I would have Nice Things, I would not live paycheck to paycheck.  That’s me, always dictating to God the terms under which I will and will not live.  A priest friend tells me that God loves it when I do this (“if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”).   

I’ve always tried to do the responsible thing.  Usually that has coincided with doing the right thing for our family.  This is the first time I have honestly felt as though the smart thing (get a job) is not necessarily the right thing for us.  So.  Here we are, dipping into our savings to make it through the next two years, and all those luxuries I worked so hard for – movies, dinners out, vacations, nice gifts, name-brand cereal, Ann Taylor Loft shopping sprees – are things of the past.  But I know I won’t miss any of those things as much as I will miss the warm, wonderful reassurance of financial security.

I’ve never liked the expression “leap of faith.” If your faith is rock-solid, it’s not really a leap, because you truly believe that everything will work out, despite all appearances to the contrary.  A decision only feels like a leap when you’re not sure what the hell you’re leaping to.  This choice we’ve made, to have me home with Abigail while she’s young, feels like a gigantic leap to me.  And that seems to prove what I have long suspected about my faith: I don’t have too much of it after all.  I don’t really trust anyone, including (especially) God, to take care of anything that’s truly important.  I am not relying on God to get us through the next two, two and a half years, while Dan finishes his PhD.  If we make it through, I tell myself every day, we are the ones who have to make it happen.

I could write a whole separate entry – and I most likely will – about how frightening it is for me personally to take time off of work, knowing that I may not go back, wondering what it means if I don’t.  I’ve always worked, and have mostly liked it, and I have always been too quick to base my self-worth, my identity even, on what I can do and accomplish.  Maybe feeding and changing and clothing my daughter are small accomplishments in and of themselves, but right now I lack the ability to view them as such.  I like taking care of Abigail, I love spending my days with her, but it still feels like a luxury, certainly not a real job.  Maybe that will change someday; I’ve only been a stay-at-home mom for, let’s see, a week and a half now, after five years as a working professional.  I have to give myself time to adjust.

This could be a major turning point in my life, and it is incredibly scary at times.  But in my better moments – moments of lucidity or insanity, who’s to say – I try to tell myself that there is no reason to be so fearful.  Maybe such anxiety was acceptable back when I was a fearful twelve-year-old living with her parents.  But since then I have moved across the country; I went to college three thousand miles from home;  I married the man I love despite familial opposition; I’ve spent years working for good, important causes; I went through 24 hours of unmedicated labor, for God’s sake, and pushed a beautiful, breathing human being into the world.  I should not be afraid of a little change.

It’s quite possible that everyone who knows me will think I am making the wrong decision to stay home with my daughter.  I’ve always cared a little too much about what other people think of me, and this is as good a time as any to shed that particular hangup.  People can think what they want to think, and I’m sure many will voice their concerns; no matter: I am one of the most obnoxiously stubborn people I know.  If something is important enough I can dig in my heels with the best of them, and cling to what I believe is right.  I should not be afraid.  I should not be worried.  I should be grateful for this latest opportunity to prove myself worthy of a challenge.