New Beginnings

This week was a big week for us. Not only did Blaine start 2^nd grade and Aislin start kindergarten, I started working at a new elementary school in addition to county preschool assessments and Brent took on a Director position at a private company. Of all the news, Brent’s leaving the firm will have the largest impact on our family. His decision to leave was not made lightly. Earlier this summer while the kids were in Florida Brent took the week off from work to be at home. It was a quiet week for us. I was finishing up a few days at work and Brent had just come off a really difficult client with long hours for weeks on end. During such breaks it is not unusual for Brent to take some down time. However I noticed that this down time seemed different, he was more quiet than typical. At the end of the week he announced to me that he was going to leave the firm. Talk about shock! The firm has been a huge part of our life for the past 7 years. My first reaction was shock, and then some excitement, although I was not certain that he really meant it. I thought maybe he was just feeling burnt out so I didn’t allow myself to get too excited about the prospect of him leaving. There is an unspoken understanding at Brent’s firm, you are married to the firm first and family second. While the firm tries to espouse work life balance it is just not possible. They provide client service, whenever client’s need service. Brent is a perfectionist, he is driven and always a top performer.

Thus his decision came as a shock as well to various partners and directors at his firm. It was like a death had occurred. I lost track of how many phone calls he received. I listened to him over and over explain his reasoning. He had who knows how many lunch dates set up so that he could talk face to face with all the partners. The female partners seemed to get it. The male partners, well many had been divorced… Our kids are growing fast, as long as he stayed with the firm he would be giving up the same things he has given up for the past 7 years: nightly family dinners, kids activities, time with family while traveling for weeks on end. We took time while the kids were gone to talk about what we wanted out of the next 5 -10 years. What we wanted to achieve for ourselves and the kids. How we wanted our financial situation to look. We decided we wanted the one thing you can never get back: time. We have a very comfortable life. We are in the home we wanted, in the school district we wanted. I am happy with my career. We have healthy, sweet, considerate, intelligent and beautiful children. We are developing hobbies to enjoy as a family. Did we want to sacrifice any more time with family so that Brent could keep going down the partner track? No.

Back in May it nearly killed me when Aislin asked me a question one night. It was a few nights before her birthday, which fell on a Wednesday. I was cooking dinner and she came to stand next to me. She asked me if I could “Please call Daddy and tell him to ask his manager if he could please come home for dinner on Wednesday night because it is his daughter’s birthday and he really wants to be there.” It broke my heart. They knew that Daddy is just not home during the week nights. He does not eat dinner with us and he sometimes gets home before the kids are asleep. They see him in the morning and the weekends and even then he is usually connected to his blackberry. I have always had a mental picture of our family as such, the kids and I are one unit, like the earth, and Brent is a separate unit, like the moon, orbiting around us. He is there, but we only see him at certain times. All the while that he worked these hours I reminded myself that we all benefited from his hard work and that there are many families who make greater sacrifices than us. Parents who work multiple jobs, single moms, military families, but I tried not to let myself think of the possibility that maybe we didn’t have to make those sacrifices. After all, I was not a single mom. We did not work multiple jobs. Brent certainly was not in the military.

Over the past year many colleagues from Brent’s “start class” at the firm left. Not one of them has regretted it. During that week off this summer while the kids were gone we had dinner with a couple similar to us. The wife works in the field of education and they have a young child and are planning to add to their family. The husband left the firm last fall. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel jealous while eating dinner with them. They were happy. They had quality time. He could disconnect. Disconnect. A word that has not existed in our vocabulary the whole of our children’s lives.

Now it looks like we will too be able to disconnect. Brent took the summer to make cautious decisions about the right time to leave. The firm was great in helping him find the right opportunities. He found a company where it looks like he will still have room to develop professionally, be challenged, progress further in his career AND have quality family time. I am so excited! For the first time as a family we will be having family dinners. These past few weeks we have been re-integrating Brent into the family. I joked with him that we were going to develop a “professional development plan for his re-integration into the family”. He has been home for dinner, and bath time and bed time. He has been disconnected from work without the constant stress of clients. It has been nice, really nice.

Tomorrow is day 1 of his new career. I am so excited. This may just be our best year yet! We know what we are walking away from. Had our lives been just a bit different, had we not been surprised with children so young, Brent would have stayed on partner track, just as I would have stayed in my PhD program. But our lives are different. Our lives are more complicated than most people our age. We are young parents, but ambitious. We have had to choose to achieve different goals. Goals that encompass our family which we would not change for the world. We have a great life, it is time for us to start enjoying that life and living it to the fullest. Here’s to looking forward while appreciating the hard work that got us to this moment.