Being a Weekend Mom

Another long day over. And I mean literally long day. I’ve been up since 8AM and was out of the house before 10AM. And I just got home about an hour ago.

Let’s not talk about that, shall we? 😀 Although I need all the powers that be to intercede in the processing of my passport due to an urgent business need to travel. I need the passport to come out by the 14th of this month. But like I said, that’s not what I really wanted to talk – well, write – about.

Since the start of this year, I have been travelling to the mountain city and back every weekend  (well, for those times that my little boy is staying up there). I think I have been home to the mountain city this year more than I had gone home for the last two years combined. Travelling 6 hours each way every weekend is tiring, to be honest. Given how stressful my job nowadays is (but trust me, even if it is stressful, I still enjoy what I do regardless of all the frustrations), 6-hour long commute is not exactly a walk in the park. Yes, I can take naps during the trip but given the cramped up space, it is not easy finding the most comfortable position to do so. Unless you take the deluxe bus trip which will cost more (and I don’t have the budget for that).

Whenever my son doesn’t have doctors’ appointments scheduled in the big metro, he stays with my family in the mountain city. Every Friday (well, Saturday early morning) right after work, I rush to the bus terminal to catch my scheduled trip. I usually get home at around 6-7AM, depending on how fast the bus goes and the trip that I was able to get. I get to spend my Saturday and Sunday with my little boy. If the weather permits, the two of us usually go to the mall, have snacks (well, coffee), meet a few friends (if I am able to schedule it with them) and window shop. We go home after about a few hours of staying out, take a nap, play, have dinner followed by probably a movie before putting the little boy to sleep.

I usually try to put my little Z to sleep on Sunday nights before I prepare to leave for the big metro. This is because  it is hard to leave the little boy while he is giving you all those sweet and innocent smiles that makes your heart soar to high heavens when he is awake. The smiles that makes me want to just stay and play with the little boy and forget about work.

The very first time that I was leaving my little boy with my Mom was just this January. After the holiday break, I brought the little boy with me to the big metro due to scheduled doctor’s appointment. But after that week, I brought him home and left him to stay with my Mom for a week. I still remember that Sunday night when I didn’t want to let go of my little baby boy. I put him to sleep that night, too, before I left. I almost didn’t want to put him down on the bed, too, because he looked so secured and peaceful sleeping in my arms that night. I was working so hard to hold back my tears when I eventually put him down on the bed, tucked him in and kissed him good night.

When I learned that I was pregnant and I made the decision to become a single Mom, I already accepted the fact that I am going to need my family’s help in raising my little boy since I didn’t want my son to be raised by a nanny. I already accepted the fact that I will become a weekend Mom – meaning, I get to be a full-time Mom to my son during the weekends since I have to work during the week days. I made all those decisions based on logic. And it was logical.

7 months to being a weekend Mom most of the time, I now realize that it is hard. It is a whole lot harder than I imagined. I miss a lot of my son’s firsts in terms of his growth and development and there was even a time that he had to be confined due to diarrhea and I wasn’t there.

From a mother’s perspective, one would say that you should always be there for your kids no matter what. Well, guess what? I haven’t been there during the first time that my son was able to balance himself in a standing position against the wall. I wasn’t there when he had diarrhea and needed to be confined for a few days. I wasn’t there when he first uttered all those syllables that he now loves to say. I wasn’t there for a whole lot of things because I was at work and he was hundreds of miles away from me.

Sometimes, thinking about the things that I missed in his early life makes me feel like I am a bad Mom to my son. It makes me question myself if I really deserve to be his Mom. And it makes me feel really bad to have missed a lot. I ask myself if the sacrifice I am doing is all going to be worth it in the end. To be honest, I don’t have any answer to that. Maybe, maybe not.

I thought that the heavy feeling I feel whenever I leave my son back home will get any easier with time. It doesn’t seem like it. It gets harder every week that I have to leave him. Two days is not enough to make up for the lost time.  Two days is not enough to spend time with a growing little boy compared to five long days spent at work. If only we could reverse it. Riiiiiight… LOL!

Regardless of how tiring the long commute is going home to the mountain city, if that is where my little boy is, then that is where I will spend my weekends. Even if I only have one day to stay with him, I will still go home to my little boy. Forget how tiring the trip is or how little sleep I had, nothing beats the fact that even for just a day, I get to spend it watching my son do his antics, showing off his newly acquired skills, and most definitely, seeing those smiles that can always, always wipe the tiredness and all other negative energy away.