
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 13, 1994                   TAG: 9410150019
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MOMMY GUILT FROM TWO BLOCKS AWAY

The babies were having a blast on the playground, singing songs and playing peek-a-boo. Max, my 7-month-old, was looking around from his stroller - smiling, babbling and fussing at the same time. When the woman in charge held out her strong, confident arms, he gladly reached out for her.

I know all this, not because I was standing there watching it live, but because I saw it the other night on a video. The day-care center Max goes to provides one periodically so parents can see what the kids do during the day.

Watching the tape, it struck me that my son has another life, separate from me.

A place where he plays, cries, eats, dirties diapers and picks up colds.

A place where the woman with the confident arms glides him down the miniature slide - something I have never done. A place where they sing songs I don't even know.

Eight weeks into the full-time day-care scene, I am in the throes of Mommy Guilt. As I sit here in my work-station cubicle, it comforts me to know that Max is only two blocks away - that I can actually look out from the office window here and see the day care's front door. I also feel good knowing I'll see him in a few hours at lunch, when I visit each day to play with him and nurse.

There, I'll likely find him chewing on a cardboard book or laughing at a woman named Jane, who can get him to stop crying simply by singing "Sally the camel has three humps." Hopefully his Pillsbury Doughboy face will light up when he sees me, exposing his two little bumpy teeth.

The books say we'll soon be visited by "separation anxiety" - that sticky period babies go through when they cry each time you leave them. But for me, separation anxiety has already hit.

I am thrilled with the quality of care he gets, with the foot prints and finger paintings, with the report card the lead-teacher writes each day - cereal for breakfast, pears for lunch, two bowel movements, three short naps.

"Max has been in a good mood today. He's probably getting excited about his grandma coming," she wrote in his notebook one day. "Jane sang him to sleep, but he woke up in about 15 minutes. She sang to him again and he slept a little longer," she wrote another day.

I can imagine his excitement. I can picture Jane singing him to sleep. But because of a hard, complicated set of choices my husband and I made, there are eight hours each weekday when our son's life goes on without us - when imagination, memory and pictures have to suffice.

Sometimes I find myself lingering by the office window, wondering what's going on two blocks away, which baby he's sitting beside, whose arms are holding him, if he's going to crawl today - and if so, will they tell me (or let me see that "first" magic step for myself?).

It makes me feel the way Max did in that playground video.

It makes me want to smile, babble and cry - all at the same time.

Beth Macy is a features department staff writer and Thursday columnist.

by CNB