I've worked my entire adult life, and I've never had a full week of paid time off. Not one.
I've missed work because my children were sick. Because I was sick. Because there were school functions, field trips, appointments, and a thousand little things that needed me to be somewhere other than work. But those days weren't simply days away from work. They came with a price, and sometimes that price was something I couldn't afford to give or get back.
Worrying about how I was going to tell my employer that my child was sick. Leaving in the middle of the day. Wondering if I could afford to miss another, would they understand? Would it be weaponized? If they'd be angry, or if this would be the time they decided my lack of reliability would outweigh my value. And the guilt. God, the guilt. Feeling guilty for leaving work when my children or a family member needed me, and the guilt of worrying, when I should've been able to give my undivided attention to those that needed it. I couldn't afford to lose another job, but I couldn't afford to stop being a good mother either.
And I can't tell you how many employers told me, "We're family here." If you need time off, take it. If your family needs you, that's what we're here for. We're like a family. It wasn't just the big corporations, either. Sometimes it was the little mom-and-pop places, the businesses where you'd think people might understand a little better. I wanted so badly to believe them, especially as a single mother with no real fallback, no one I could consistently count on to care for my children when something happened. Including their other parent. Especially their other parent. I can't begin to explain how deflating it was to discover how conditional that understanding could be. They'd give a little, sometimes even make you feel grateful for it, and then take so fucking much. And worse, they'd weaponize it. The time they'd graciously allowed me to take would find its way back into conversations about my attendance, my reliability, my commitment. It would show up in performance reviews, in conversations I was called into, sometimes even in a write-up. It didn't matter that I'd stayed late when they needed help, that I'd worked off the clock, that I'd come in on my days off. Those things never seemed to count. They never factored into the equation. Somehow, the hours I gave freely belonged to them, but the hours I needed for my family became something I owed.
Sometimes I lost pay I so desperately needed. Sometimes I worked with a fever, or a broken tooth, or a migraine because I couldn't afford not to. And sometimes, when I was allowed to, I had to make up the time missed. Those hours didn't disappear. They were waiting for me. I'd spend the day taking care of a sick child, then spend the rest of the week working what felt like even longer hours to make up for it. Already tired, already stretched thin, and now somehow expected to find more of myself to give. The time wasn't free. I paid for it with loss of sleep, sheer exhaustion, more time away from being a mother, with whatever little bit of myself I had left at the end of the day.
There were years when I worked one, two, sometimes three jobs at a time. How do you call out sick from one job and then show up for another? How do you explain that you aren't well enough to work one shift but can't afford to miss the next? And all the while, friends and family would say things like, "You can't keep missing that much work." As though I didn't already know. As though I wasn't terrified of that very thing. But when I needed someone to help with the children, there was always another obligation, another schedule, something else already planned. Nobody seemed to have the time I so desperately needed, and somehow I was expected to find more of my own.
Sometimes I had no job at all, and the days stretched endlessly before me, and there was no peace in that. Just the awful uncertainty of not knowing how I would pay my bills. I robbed Peter to pay Paul, leaving one bill unpaid so I could catch up on another, only to fall behind somewhere else the following month. I applied for assistance and was denied because I made too much money. Imagine that. Never enough to pay the bills, but somehow always too much to qualify for help. Even the days I took to chaperone a field trip or attend something important came with calculations. What would I lose? Could I make it up? Would asking for the time off put my job in jeopardy? I don't remember ever being able to simply say, "I'm taking the day off," without wondering what it might cost me.
And today, with all this time to think, I find myself remembering the things I missed. Not just the school functions or the little moments with my children, but entire pieces of their childhoods. My oldest son helping raise his younger siblings when he should have been enjoying his teenage years, figuring out who he was and what he wanted from life. My daughter telling me she didn't want to have to work the way I did, and then watching her work two jobs while putting herself through school, earning scholarships and building something for herself. My youngest, who has depended on me for so much. I wonder what they think about those years, what they remember, what they might resent. I don't know. And maybe that's part of what hurts, because I can only see it through my own guilt. I wanted to give them so much more of myself, but I was always working to give them what little I could afford.
And then there's the guilt of remembering that I wanted time for myself, too. God forbid. There were days when I was so mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted that I would spend an entire day on the couch doing absolutely nothing. And I would feel terrible about it. Absolutely fraught with guilt. There were errands to run, children to take to school and pick up, things that needed cleaning, bills that needed paying, people I hadn't seen, people I hadn't called. Even when I said I was taking a day for myself, it rarely belonged entirely to me. And if I spent time with one person, I wondered who I was neglecting by not spending it with someone else. There were so many layers of guilt that eventually I don't think I knew how to do anything without feeling I should be doing something else.
Until this week.
For the first time in my adult life, I have an entire week off, and I'm getting paid for it. My employer even asked our entire class to take the week. And the strangest thing is, I haven't known what to do with myself.
There are things I want to do. Things that need cleaning, organizing, fixing. Things I've been meaning to get around to for weeks, months, maybe longer. I have the time now. I could do them, and part of me really wants to. But I don't have to. And if they don't get done today, or tomorrow, or even this week, somehow it's still okay. I keep coming back to that. It's okay.
Nobody is sick. Nobody needs me to call my employer and explain why I can't come in. I'm not losing a paycheck. I'm not wondering whether I'll still have a job when I return. I can wake up in the morning and decide what I feel like doing, and if the answer is nothing, I can do nothing. It's such a simple thing, isn't it? Something so ordinary that I imagine most people wouldn't give it a second thought. And yet here I am, in my fifties, trying to figure out what to do with a week that doesn't require me to justify having it. Or a week that is mapped out caring for everyone else.
I don't think I ever understood how much fear was attached to taking time off until I was given this week off. How many years I spent asking permission to take care of the people I loved. How many times I worried that doing the right thing for my children might mean losing the very job I needed to provide for them. And how many times I came home exhausted from making up hours I'd missed because somebody needed me, only to find that somebody still needed me.
And now here I am, with a whole week that belongs to me. There are things I could be doing, things I probably should be doing, but for once they can wait. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that. There's a strange kind of sadness in realizing just how unfamiliar this feels, how many years I've lived without ever knowing what it was like to have time that didn't come at the expense of something else.
I've been crying today. A lot. I'm happy, genuinely happy, and so grateful for this opportunity, but there's a sadness sitting right alongside it. I know this is a new job. I haven't even begun doing the work I'll eventually be doing, and I'm sure there will be difficult days. But something about this feels like a turning point in my life, and perhaps that's why all these memories keep coming. I have the time to think about them now. To remember the things I missed, the sacrifices I made, the things I wish I could change. And the woman I was through all of it, who was so busy keeping everyone else's world turning that she barely had time to stand still in her own.
And then, in the middle of all this remembering, something else came back to me.
I remembered a day when I called out sick from work and went to one of my favorite places, Veterans Memorial Park. I had stones and rocks in my pockets, silver and pearls on my body. I took off my shoes and walked barefoot through the grass, then through the water, and back through the grass again. Eventually I lay down and watched the dragonflies hovering overhead. The flowers were beautiful, the bees were bumbling around, butterflies drifted through the air, and there were wasps nearby that I was a little afraid might sting me. But they didn't. They just let me lie there.
I remember feeling as though I were suspended in the air with the dragonflies, hovering and turning with them above the grass and flowers. I wished I could be one. So carefree, so happy to be flying around that beautiful little place. I watched the sunlight catch their wings when they stopped for a moment, watched them chase each other, and wondered whether perhaps the ghosts of people I'd loved and lost were somewhere within them. I didn't know how a dragonfly spent the stages of its life. I wasn't thinking about how long it lived or what came next. I was just watching those moments when it hovered above me, wishing I could be part of that little world.
It could have been the hottest day, and it was still the prettiest fucking picture. The butterflies, the birds, the clouds, the flowers, the dragonflies and the bees. Even the wasps. I didn't care about anything or anybody for those few moments. I was just there, being held in something peaceful and beautiful, and I remember how wonderful that felt.
I'd almost forgotten that day. Or maybe I hadn't forgotten it so much as stopped allowing myself to have days like it. I can remember thinking about going back, and then thinking about the gas it would take to get there, the money I might need for something else, the errands I should be running, the people I should be spending time with instead. Even something as simple as lying in the grass became another calculation.
And today, after remembering all of this, after crying over the years and the time and the things I can't get back, I walked outside to my porch to have a cigarette.
And don't you know, a chubby little dragonfly, the prettiest burnt orange, came scooting right past me.
Almost on cue.
I stood there smiling at the timing of it. That funny little autumn-colored dragonfly, appearing just as I'd been remembering how badly I once wished I could be one. I don't know what to make of it, and I don't particularly need to. It was beautiful. It made me smile. And for a moment, I wasn't thinking about everything I'd missed or everything I still needed to do. I was just watching a dragonfly.
I've had plenty of time off. I've just never had a week off without wondering what it was going to cost me.
Until now.
And I think I'm beginning to remember what to do with it.
I've missed work because my children were sick. Because I was sick. Because there were school functions, field trips, appointments, and a thousand little things that needed me to be somewhere other than work. But those days weren't simply days away from work. They came with a price, and sometimes that price was something I couldn't afford to give or get back.
Worrying about how I was going to tell my employer that my child was sick. Leaving in the middle of the day. Wondering if I could afford to miss another, would they understand? Would it be weaponized? If they'd be angry, or if this would be the time they decided my lack of reliability would outweigh my value. And the guilt. God, the guilt. Feeling guilty for leaving work when my children or a family member needed me, and the guilt of worrying, when I should've been able to give my undivided attention to those that needed it. I couldn't afford to lose another job, but I couldn't afford to stop being a good mother either.
And I can't tell you how many employers told me, "We're family here." If you need time off, take it. If your family needs you, that's what we're here for. We're like a family. It wasn't just the big corporations, either. Sometimes it was the little mom-and-pop places, the businesses where you'd think people might understand a little better. I wanted so badly to believe them, especially as a single mother with no real fallback, no one I could consistently count on to care for my children when something happened. Including their other parent. Especially their other parent. I can't begin to explain how deflating it was to discover how conditional that understanding could be. They'd give a little, sometimes even make you feel grateful for it, and then take so fucking much. And worse, they'd weaponize it. The time they'd graciously allowed me to take would find its way back into conversations about my attendance, my reliability, my commitment. It would show up in performance reviews, in conversations I was called into, sometimes even in a write-up. It didn't matter that I'd stayed late when they needed help, that I'd worked off the clock, that I'd come in on my days off. Those things never seemed to count. They never factored into the equation. Somehow, the hours I gave freely belonged to them, but the hours I needed for my family became something I owed.
Sometimes I lost pay I so desperately needed. Sometimes I worked with a fever, or a broken tooth, or a migraine because I couldn't afford not to. And sometimes, when I was allowed to, I had to make up the time missed. Those hours didn't disappear. They were waiting for me. I'd spend the day taking care of a sick child, then spend the rest of the week working what felt like even longer hours to make up for it. Already tired, already stretched thin, and now somehow expected to find more of myself to give. The time wasn't free. I paid for it with loss of sleep, sheer exhaustion, more time away from being a mother, with whatever little bit of myself I had left at the end of the day.
There were years when I worked one, two, sometimes three jobs at a time. How do you call out sick from one job and then show up for another? How do you explain that you aren't well enough to work one shift but can't afford to miss the next? And all the while, friends and family would say things like, "You can't keep missing that much work." As though I didn't already know. As though I wasn't terrified of that very thing. But when I needed someone to help with the children, there was always another obligation, another schedule, something else already planned. Nobody seemed to have the time I so desperately needed, and somehow I was expected to find more of my own.
Sometimes I had no job at all, and the days stretched endlessly before me, and there was no peace in that. Just the awful uncertainty of not knowing how I would pay my bills. I robbed Peter to pay Paul, leaving one bill unpaid so I could catch up on another, only to fall behind somewhere else the following month. I applied for assistance and was denied because I made too much money. Imagine that. Never enough to pay the bills, but somehow always too much to qualify for help. Even the days I took to chaperone a field trip or attend something important came with calculations. What would I lose? Could I make it up? Would asking for the time off put my job in jeopardy? I don't remember ever being able to simply say, "I'm taking the day off," without wondering what it might cost me.
And today, with all this time to think, I find myself remembering the things I missed. Not just the school functions or the little moments with my children, but entire pieces of their childhoods. My oldest son helping raise his younger siblings when he should have been enjoying his teenage years, figuring out who he was and what he wanted from life. My daughter telling me she didn't want to have to work the way I did, and then watching her work two jobs while putting herself through school, earning scholarships and building something for herself. My youngest, who has depended on me for so much. I wonder what they think about those years, what they remember, what they might resent. I don't know. And maybe that's part of what hurts, because I can only see it through my own guilt. I wanted to give them so much more of myself, but I was always working to give them what little I could afford.
And then there's the guilt of remembering that I wanted time for myself, too. God forbid. There were days when I was so mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted that I would spend an entire day on the couch doing absolutely nothing. And I would feel terrible about it. Absolutely fraught with guilt. There were errands to run, children to take to school and pick up, things that needed cleaning, bills that needed paying, people I hadn't seen, people I hadn't called. Even when I said I was taking a day for myself, it rarely belonged entirely to me. And if I spent time with one person, I wondered who I was neglecting by not spending it with someone else. There were so many layers of guilt that eventually I don't think I knew how to do anything without feeling I should be doing something else.
Until this week.
For the first time in my adult life, I have an entire week off, and I'm getting paid for it. My employer even asked our entire class to take the week. And the strangest thing is, I haven't known what to do with myself.
There are things I want to do. Things that need cleaning, organizing, fixing. Things I've been meaning to get around to for weeks, months, maybe longer. I have the time now. I could do them, and part of me really wants to. But I don't have to. And if they don't get done today, or tomorrow, or even this week, somehow it's still okay. I keep coming back to that. It's okay.
Nobody is sick. Nobody needs me to call my employer and explain why I can't come in. I'm not losing a paycheck. I'm not wondering whether I'll still have a job when I return. I can wake up in the morning and decide what I feel like doing, and if the answer is nothing, I can do nothing. It's such a simple thing, isn't it? Something so ordinary that I imagine most people wouldn't give it a second thought. And yet here I am, in my fifties, trying to figure out what to do with a week that doesn't require me to justify having it. Or a week that is mapped out caring for everyone else.
I don't think I ever understood how much fear was attached to taking time off until I was given this week off. How many years I spent asking permission to take care of the people I loved. How many times I worried that doing the right thing for my children might mean losing the very job I needed to provide for them. And how many times I came home exhausted from making up hours I'd missed because somebody needed me, only to find that somebody still needed me.
And now here I am, with a whole week that belongs to me. There are things I could be doing, things I probably should be doing, but for once they can wait. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that. There's a strange kind of sadness in realizing just how unfamiliar this feels, how many years I've lived without ever knowing what it was like to have time that didn't come at the expense of something else.
I've been crying today. A lot. I'm happy, genuinely happy, and so grateful for this opportunity, but there's a sadness sitting right alongside it. I know this is a new job. I haven't even begun doing the work I'll eventually be doing, and I'm sure there will be difficult days. But something about this feels like a turning point in my life, and perhaps that's why all these memories keep coming. I have the time to think about them now. To remember the things I missed, the sacrifices I made, the things I wish I could change. And the woman I was through all of it, who was so busy keeping everyone else's world turning that she barely had time to stand still in her own.
And then, in the middle of all this remembering, something else came back to me.
I remembered a day when I called out sick from work and went to one of my favorite places, Veterans Memorial Park. I had stones and rocks in my pockets, silver and pearls on my body. I took off my shoes and walked barefoot through the grass, then through the water, and back through the grass again. Eventually I lay down and watched the dragonflies hovering overhead. The flowers were beautiful, the bees were bumbling around, butterflies drifted through the air, and there were wasps nearby that I was a little afraid might sting me. But they didn't. They just let me lie there.
I remember feeling as though I were suspended in the air with the dragonflies, hovering and turning with them above the grass and flowers. I wished I could be one. So carefree, so happy to be flying around that beautiful little place. I watched the sunlight catch their wings when they stopped for a moment, watched them chase each other, and wondered whether perhaps the ghosts of people I'd loved and lost were somewhere within them. I didn't know how a dragonfly spent the stages of its life. I wasn't thinking about how long it lived or what came next. I was just watching those moments when it hovered above me, wishing I could be part of that little world.
It could have been the hottest day, and it was still the prettiest fucking picture. The butterflies, the birds, the clouds, the flowers, the dragonflies and the bees. Even the wasps. I didn't care about anything or anybody for those few moments. I was just there, being held in something peaceful and beautiful, and I remember how wonderful that felt.
I'd almost forgotten that day. Or maybe I hadn't forgotten it so much as stopped allowing myself to have days like it. I can remember thinking about going back, and then thinking about the gas it would take to get there, the money I might need for something else, the errands I should be running, the people I should be spending time with instead. Even something as simple as lying in the grass became another calculation.
And today, after remembering all of this, after crying over the years and the time and the things I can't get back, I walked outside to my porch to have a cigarette.
And don't you know, a chubby little dragonfly, the prettiest burnt orange, came scooting right past me.
Almost on cue.
I stood there smiling at the timing of it. That funny little autumn-colored dragonfly, appearing just as I'd been remembering how badly I once wished I could be one. I don't know what to make of it, and I don't particularly need to. It was beautiful. It made me smile. And for a moment, I wasn't thinking about everything I'd missed or everything I still needed to do. I was just watching a dragonfly.
I've had plenty of time off. I've just never had a week off without wondering what it was going to cost me.
Until now.
And I think I'm beginning to remember what to do with it.
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