welcome home, Jill

Yesterday I wrote of my daughter Katie's homecoming from a mission trip to Paraguay. Today I write of another of my girls, my daughter-in-love Jill. She and Mark have chosen for Jill to stay home with their baby, due in one week!

When I chose to stay home with our son David 28 years ago, I had little idea what it entailed. My own mother stayed home, but since she was gone, I had few mentors to call on. In fact, most of the women around me were career women and the super-woman mentality was prevalent.

I imagined PJ'd toddlers sweetly lined up on the couch, hands folded, at Christmas. If I applied discipline just right, they would never misbehave, always eat what I served and love me because I was their mother: an ideal mother at that.

No one told me that I could kiss a solid night's sleep good-bye for a very long time. That a croupy toddler would need mommy to hold him all night long. That just because a 15-month old eats carrots on Monday doesn't mean he'll eat them on Wednesday. That little children make lots of noise. Incessantly. That at times my tears would come from sheer exhaustion and frustration. That my relationship with my husband would change, not always for the better. And that I would sometimes swim against a tide of others' opinions regarding how best to spend my life.


Jill with her niece, Ashlyn

But coming home meant more. It took me to a level of selflessness I'd never known. It gave me the time to fall in love with my baby. It taught me to slow down and realize that babies learn and grow at their own particular pace. I relished nursing him in the same rocker my mother, and grandmother, had nursed.

I was free to stroll with my son on warm Florida days, lie on a blanket in the sun, and laugh at ourselves in the mirror. I remember him calling me "Baba" and wanting to turn off the "yite" in his room at bedtime. We read dozens of books together. I witnessed his language explode in discovering the world. It was an absolute wonder to me.

Being at home full-time was the toughest job of my life. But now at the other end, I see it was also the most rewarding. What I gained far surpassed all that I gave up.



Welcome home, Jill. May your home be a space for nurturing new life, the most precious of gifts: your child, your daughter, your new love.

And when exhaustion sets in, you can call on Baba.