Work Friends

Today we picked up my husband from work and we were a bit early.
As we waited, the soldiers came out, some with their coffee mugs, some with their gear, but many with smiles on their faces chatting with their co-workers and buddies.

Now, I totally get that there are relationships that grow deeper when you’re in the army. When you’re in combat with your co-workers, or on exercise sleeping in the snow, you need to rely on each other more. Quite frankly, your life often depends on the people you work with. They become more than co-workers, they become your brothers and sisters, they become your family.

But as I watched them walk out together, joking and laughing and climbing into their cars to head for coffee and lunch, it brought back a feeling I hadn’t felt in a while: comradery.

I used to work in offices and day cares. I have met many of my long time, life time friends through my employment. In fact, some of those friends have also become family for me, and for my children.

From lightning speed Tim Hortons runs during our lunch break from Canning to Kentville, to ornament exchanges and pot luck dinners with my Wise Owl gals, or even just chatting with your co-working friend during lunch breaks or nap time… that social aspect and comradery with co-workers is missing when you’re a stay at home mom and I didn’t realize I even missed it until today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had crappy co-workers too. I’ve had jobs I didn’t love and worked with people I didn’t even want to talk to. But for the most part, I’ve been really lucky to find at least one or two or three amazing people in my employments.

Staying at home with my kids is something I’ve always wanted to do. They are only little for such a short amount of time, and I loved how my mom was always at home for me as a stay at home mom, I wanted that for them.

I never really expected to homeschool them though so although I wanted to be a stay at home mom, I really thought that some day they would go to school.

Right now, I would have two kids in the school system, one in grade 2 and the other in senior kindergarten. Oh what life would be like to be a stay home mom to just one child all day and two others around school hours. Next year, all three would be in school. Life would be very different.

I also always planned to open my own nursery school or preschool when my kids went to school, giving me 2.5 hours every day to teach and flex my Early Childhood Educator muscles as well as giving me that interaction with parents, and maybe even an employee.

This isn’t to say I regret my choices to stay home and homeschool my own kids. I truly am so grateful that I can do so, I think it’s the best option for our specific family, and I’m thankful for the ability to teach my kids as they learn best.

But it’s lonely. And you know what? It’s OKAY to be thankful for your current life and still miss aspects of your former life.

I do miss that comradery. I miss the connections and chatting with other adults about grown up stuff. I don’t miss a lot of the gossip, but maybe I miss a little of it… I am human after all. But mostly miss talking to people every day who respect me, who want to hear what I have to say, who trust me with their feelings and stories and problems.

I love my kids and I’m so thankful and grateful that I get to spend all of my days with them every day. But it is hard and exhausting and lonely even though I am never alone.

Then again, it’s a season. In the grand scheme of life, it’s a pretty small window of time. Some day, the kids will be grown and I will probably head back to some kind of work outside of the home, and I will miss these days too.