I read a really powerfully written message today over here: To The Mother of Only One Child,

Transitioning into motherhood is a big step in our vocations.  It is not an easy step, not in the least! I remember my first child. There were some difficult changes that took place.  For one thing, I remember giving up the huge camera bag.  I agonized over the need to accept that I could baby-wear the child and carry a diaper bag with a compact camera but that my days of lugging four lenses a tripod, filters, and back-up camera body were over.  I didn’t know when I went into motherhood for the first time that my passion for photography was going to go into mothballs.

Even though giving up the big camera bag was difficult, the first child was fun. I was young and fit and could wear him in the baby carrier and carry a diaper bag and be on the go much as before.  Just without the ubiquitous camera.

Two was the crisis point for me.  No longer could I range relatively unencumbered. Two meant the back-pack wasn’t enough.  Two meant snacks and sippy cups. Two meant a stroller or one in the grocery cart and one in the back-pack.  Two meant more trouble, less freedom, and no way to maintain my intellectual life.

I’m a bookworm, a geek, a study as breathing person.  I enjoy genetics and theology and difficult books that few people choose to read for fun.  Children, wonderful as they are when small, do not stimulate the mind.  I sometimes wondered if I were going crazy.

Stay-at-home Mom’s will find that their educations don’t really matter much to a child who needs a diaper change.  I never found the diaper changes difficult, I found the lack of stimulating adult conversation difficult.

I longed for a solution to this lack.  I remember how the other mothers fell into two camps.

One camp, all stay at home moms who clearly did NOT find a lack of mental stimulation a problem, insisted that if I were praying enough that my need for brain use would go away.  I found that response rather useless. I love prayer but it is not a magic pill that makes a geek into a non-geek.

The other camp, dedicated mothers who had kept themselves in the job market at least on a part time basis, insisted that the only solution was to put my kids in daycare and go to work.  A paycheck, they said, would solve all my problems.  This was also rather useless advice considering my commitment to my children.  My vocation is to stay home with them.  Their advice was to ditch that part of my vocation.  Again, rather poor advice.

THE best advice I ever got was from a NUN.  Yup, from a woman without a career, without advanced degrees, without children came THE best advice I ever received.  She spoke to women with the awareness of just how difficult it is to stay home with small children when your brains didn’t turn off or go on hold!  It felt so GOOD to finally find someone who UNDERSTOOD.  My brains did not go to sleep just because I gave birth to these precious little persons.  Her advice came down to prayer and to study at home.  Because of this Nun, I began a dialog with the great minds of the Church.

Vocations are challenging.  I adjusted to motherhood, dialoged with the minds of the Church and with people online, and did some part time graduate school in genetics.  I loved sitting on the floor studying genetics with my two children toddling around me.  Sometimes my daughter would sit in my lap and I would read to her from my textbooks. My son would bring me things to look at and admire and I would stop my work to talk and listen and then he would go off and I would go back to the books.  It was so good to spend that time with them and not have my brain on hold.

They grew up, I planned a change in my vocation, and added a masters degree at last.  The planned on career didn’t happen though.  I met my husband and am back to toddlers.  THIS time I know what to do though.  Maybe we’ll talk about that tomorrow.