Confession: I cried over a peachesand-cream muffin at Starbucks. No, it wasn't over the quality of the muffin.
It was about the fact that I was standing in Starbucks alone, and it suddenly hit me that at that moment I had no one to share my muffin with.
Which wouldn't have been such a big deal in a past life. But a couple of weeks ago, it was a shock to my system. Because, for the preceding 51 weeks, I had had a constant companion for every single Starbucks trip, grocery shopping run and mall excursion I'd taken.
Yes, that constant companion was my daughter - a wee blue-eyed sprite who, since her birth in July 2012, had become such a part of me that leaving home without her felt like abandoning a limb or a vital organ. In that moment at the Starbucks counter, it hit me that our year together was over. She was in daycare, and I was about to go back to work.
Paying for that muffin was a moment that, in all its ordinariness, became a symbol of everything that had changed in my life over the past year.
One tiny newborn bundle became a growing infant, who would sit in the stroller and gurgle next to me as I drank my coffee. The infant got bigger and started to sit up on her own. We'd go for coffee and she'd spend time grinning and giggling and staring with big blue eyes at other customers.
Then she graduated to a high chair, and she'd eat her lunch while I learned to juggle a baby spoon in one hand and a coffee cup in the other.
And somehow, before I knew what had happened to the year, there she was, this "big girl" of mine, sitting up in her own chair, stuffing her tiny face with pieces of muffin while she pointed, waved and babbled to other customers. My sweet baby girl and I had done it. We'd made it through a year.
For those first eight or so hazy weeks, I'd thought that year would never end. Mothers of older babies would say, "Treasure it, it'll go so fast," and I'd smile and nod while thinking to myself, "Fast? FAST? Who are they kidding, how does a year of no sleep and hastily snatched meals and interrupted showers and constantly-attached-at-theboob baby go FAST?" Turns out they were right. It did.
We hit our stride, the wee sprite and I, and we became such constant companions that before I knew it, I was the mama I'd seen other friends become - the one who loved her baby to distraction, who rarely left her side and who hardly spared a thought for the me I used to be. I hardly remembered how much I had mourned that me - how much, at first, I felt I had lost myself somewhere and wondered if I would ever be an independent individual again.
I hadn't exactly forgotten that me, but I hadn't stopped to miss her much, either. So when, on that recent mid-July morning, I realized that the solitary woman ordering coffee and a peaches-and-cream muffin at Starbucks was that old me, it was surreal. And sad. And, even later, just a teeny-tiny bit happy.
It's not that I wanted to leave my wee sprite behind. (If I were to win the lottery tomorrow, I would happily abandon a full-time outside job and stay home with her.) But stepping out of the house without her reminded me that there are other parts of me that I'll enjoy meeting again - the singer, the writer, the reporter, the co-worker, the friend.
I've only been back at work for two weeks, and I have missed my wee sprite to pieces every day.
But I'm also happy to be back in my "old" life. To leave the house without a stroller and a diaper bag is still a little off-putting - but it's liberating, too.
To know that my wee sprite is being well cared for and enjoying a day full of fun and adventures with other little people - dare I suggest, having more fun than she'd be having at Starbucks with Mommy - makes me smile.
What helps most of all is that each moment I spend with the wee sprite now feels special. I've traded in quantity for quality. We may be together for far fewer minutes in day. But I'm absolutely present for her when we're together.
It's those moments that remind me that, while I wear my Julie-the-reporter hat during the day, I'll always and forever be Mommy.
