One Giant Leap

The Time Has Come For One Giant Leap

It’s leap year — time to take stock, take chances, shake things up a bit. And in that brave spirit, I’ve just taken the biggest leap of my life.

They were shocked when I broke the news, two weeks before returning to work after the birth of my third child — I had finally decided, I wasn’t going back. My boss, my co-workers stared at me with varying degrees of surprise and disapproval etched clearly on their faces.

I could almost hear what they were thinking.
“You’ll miss the challenge.” True, my job was challenging, exciting — it had been the part of the work I’d thrived on. From now on I won’t be getting that killer copy in just under the wire, I’ll be helping with homework, looking for lost Polly Pocket dolls, preparing dinner and feeding an impatient newborn — all at the same time. Now that’s a challenge.

“No deadlines — you’ll be bored.” Oh yeah, you try getting five people up, fed, dressed and out of the house before 9:00 am, then talk to me about deadlines.

“You’ll be so isolated — no reason to get up and dressed.” How awful. No more rush, rush, rush to get out of the house to get to a meeting and listen to someone drone on about something that will be forgotten by lunchtime. Oh sure, I’ll have a few unkempt days… but there’s a lot to be said for lounging in your pajamas on a cold, snowy day.

“What will you do without adult conversation — I’d go nuts!” Well… maybe there will be times when I’m so starved to speak with someone over the age of five that I’ll have a long talk with the lady who calls to sell me magazines. So what? Maybe she’s got something to say that I never had the time to listen to before.

“You’ve worked so hard, gotten so far, now you’ll be throwing all that away.” Not throwing away, just putting aside… for a time.

You see, it’s not like my disbelieving coworkers and disappointed boss aren’t thinking anything I haven’t thought, sitting bleary-eyed with a bottle at 2:00 am. Those who know me best can assure you I’ve thought and re-thought this decision a thousand times, weighed the pros and cons, agonized over the consequences, worked the numbers until my calculator batteries gave out.

And in the end, I realized that I’d rather be all and everything to the three precious little lives put into my care than the best, most well respected something else.

So, in this year of taking leaps, I'm ready to take the chance that I’m making a bad career move now, rather than miss the chance to spend these precious, and all too fleeting, days with my children.

I have no illusions. I know there will be days when I’m pulling my hair out, times when controlled chaos will be the rule, moments when the dullest meeting will seem glamorous. But then, I’ll hear those words my mother often repeats; There is a time and season for everything in life.

Already I’ve seen the truth of this, watched as people I’ve known tried desperately to recapture the lost moments of a time past, seeing first-hand their potent regret at the realization that once gone, some things can never be again.

And as I look into my baby's toothless grin, as I feel my pre-schooler's arms wrap around my neck, and as I watch my first-grader run up the driveway, hair flying, I realize my mother is right (but don’t tell her I said so) — the time has come to take the bravest, and probably best, leap of my life.