evolution

“Why do you work?” asked my friend the other day as I did the usual complaining about the challenges of balancing daycare and work and relationships and all that.
I thought about it. Because I want to develop too, I said.
Some days I look at Lukas babbling away before me, gaining new skills every day and I think he is just getting better and me, I am getting worse. While he gets smarter and faster and learns how to talk and move and be in this world, I am getting older and slower and my intellectual ability weakens at every night of interrupted sleep and every day of googling and gaggling and staring at my miraculous son in the solitude of my home. Basically, I am getting dumb while he gets smart. See how eloquent I have become?
No, I know, I am learning a lot about mothering and all that but it’s hard not to feel a strange and twisted sort of jealousy. He (god willing) has so much ahead of him. He is so little and able. His body is so strong as he tumbles and falls and gets up again. I love this for him but sometimes I, with my three leos in my astrological chart, reflect on the fact that I am further down on the mortal chain of ultimate disintegration. I want him to have a full life, but I don’t want to feel that he is taking mine away from me.
So I need to develop too. I need to someday be an intellectual match for my ever evolving child. That is why I want to work.