On longing and regret

I spent far too much time working when my daughter was a baby and I will never get that time back

Almost exactly a decade ago, driving to work in France in a summer so humid that the breeze drifting in through the window felt like warm soup on my neck, I was seized with the urge to do a U-turn and go back home. It was my baby’s first birthday, but I was off to the second week of a brand new job in a new country and I was convinced that it was too soon to ask for a day off. But it also felt deeply wrong to be going to work in an office empty of staff who were all on vacation, while my baby stayed home with my husband.

Eventually, as I was listlessly photocopying something in the afternoon, I mentioned to a co-worker that it was my daughter’s first birthday today and they exclaimed “What are you still doing here?! Go home!”. I listened, and rushed home to scoop up my baby, stil feeling partly guilty I had left work. And this push-pull between work and my kid would colour her first few years. When I was with her I would often be thinking about work, and when I was working, I felt awful I wasn’t with her.

In the early mornings, before reality kicked in, were my favourite times. I’d wake with her sweet pudgey little feet - each tiny toe resembling toasted mini marshmallows - squashed into my stomach, her curls damp around her face, round cheeks rising and falling as she breathed deep into me. Less than a year ago, this cherub had been part of my body, her cells nestled within mine, our souls woven together. When I looked at her in the milky light of dawn, it seemed inconceivable that she wasn’t still fused to me. That my heart was now walking around outside my body.

Until we moved to France, I’d had a fairly blissful year of motherhood living in Brighton, getting by on the odd bit of freelancing. But the chance to work in an organisation I’d always dreamed of being in, plus the offer of actually being paid well, made it seem like a no-brainer to move. Within a fortnight, our gentle days of drifting along the seafront with our baby in cloth wrap on my belly, stopping at a friend’s house for a drink before we headed home to our house on the top of a hill, were exchanged for days in high-level meetings, frantic deadlines, endless stress, and never enough time for my baby.

The whole process of moving had been so fraught with complicated bureaucracy that it seemed miraculous that we’d even arrived in France at all to start our new life. Confirmation that I’d get the job at all seemed to arrive at snail’s pace and then when I was finally offered it, I was given 14 days to pack up everything we owned and hopfoot it across the English channel.

By the time we arrived in France, in the midst of July heatwave with temperatures nearing 40C living in a house that were not equipped for such heat, we were already wrung out. Just 6 weeks before we moved, my brother-in-law Rob had died, and I was consumed with guilt at leaving my sister to navigate her grief without me there.

Those first few nights in France were spent in our rental, drenched in sweat, with a small ineffectual fan whirring, while our baby screamed in her travel cot, raging at the heat, the unfamiliar surroundings and probably picking up on the heaviness me and my husband were carrying from Rob’s death.

Once we started to settle in and build a life there - endless dinners with friends, trips to the mountains, and the breathing in great lungfuls of fresh air on quiet walks - life seemed to make a little more sense.

But the job was incredibly challenging and eventually would lead to the burnout that made me leave and move to Spain. There are so many ways I would have liked that job to have turned out differently, for my own sake. But more than that, more than anything else in fact, I have never gotten over the fact that I gave so much to a job that only turned out not to have been worth it, it snatched me away from my daughter at a point in her life that I will never get back.

In a world that hungers for more - more money, more stuff, more status, more experiences… it is worth remembering that time, the only thing that actually matters, is the one thing we can’t make more of.

Working from home wasn’t the norm as it is now, and I worked long hours in the house, often bringing home with me. Almost every weekend, I checked my emails and did at least a little work.

All the while, my baby was learning to walk, to talk, to discover new foods, new games, exploring the world.

That feeling of angst, the sense of wrongness that I wasn’t with her as much as I should have been, as much as I wanted to, felt heavy. And yet somehow I couldn’t - or at least felt like I couldn’t - change the situation. Watching someone fester in a situation that clearly doesn’t serve them seems baffling when we’re on the outside. “Leave!” we think, as if watching a movie. “Get out of there!”. Forgetting that when you’re mired in it yourself, leaving can feel as impossible as flying to the moon.

The deep regret of missing out on time with her became tattooed onto my very being, and even now when I gaze at baby pictures of her, I feel weighing me down.

I know how to logically rationalise the decision I made to work as much as I did. That it was a demanding job and wasn’t one that could be done part-time. That I needed to earn a living, and that taking that job has set me up with a thriving freelance career now. That being a full-time stay-at-home mum is no walk in the park.

But none of that changes anything. My longing to be with my baby was beyond the intellectual. Beyond anything outside of me and her, really. And now that her baby days are behind me, and pre-adolescence waves grumpily at me, I still have a flood of longing and regret. Longing for one more day to immerse myself in her baby world of half-formed words and utter delight at seeing me enter the room. Regret that I didn’t make the most of it.

Moving to Spain was intentional, and my way of ensuring that I could be freelance so that I could make the most of time with my kid. That I woudn’t have to rush out of the door early in the morning and come home late. That I would make every single dance recital, sports day, or anything else she needed me for. That I wouldn’t be so stressed all the time and I could enjoy her childhood.

For the most part, that’s what freelancing has given me. It’s not always easy, and work still gets in the way sometimes, but having autonomy over my work life means I get to choose where I spend my time.

And she may not be a little baby anymore, but I still hear a soft “mama!” as she’s going to bed and wants a last hug before she goes to sleep.