Leenie checked the refrigerator for the third time. The bottles of milk were there, as she knew they would be. Just where she’d put them. But she simply had to check a final time, had to make sure nothing had been left undone. After all, this was a turning point in her life, a make-or-break night. As she hurried by the computer desk in her kitchen, she glanced at the list of phone numbers posted by the telephone. Emergency numbers, her cell number, her private number at work, as well as the switchboard number.
Rushing out of the kitchen and down the hall, her heartbeat rapid and her stomach painfully knotted, she wondered why this had to be so difficult. It wasn’t as if she was the first woman in the world to go through this painful separation. Millions of women throughout the world had done what she was doing and most of them could probably sympathize with her feelings of guilt and fear.
As she neared the end of the hall, she slowed her pace, took a deep breath and told herself that she could do this. She was a strong woman. An independent woman. When she reached the nursery, she looked from Debra, who smiled compassionately, to Andrew, who lay sleeping peacefully in his bed, totally unaware of the trauma his mother was experiencing.
“Everything will be all right.” Debra draped her arm around Leenie’s shoulders. “You’ll be gone only a few hours and he’ll probably sleep the entire time you’re away.”
“But if he wakes and I’m not here…” Leenie pulled away from her son’s nanny, walked over to Andrew’s bassinet and watched her six-week-old baby as he slept. His little chest rose and fell softly with each tender breath he took. She reached out to touch his rosy cheek.
“If he wakes, I’ll be right here,” Debra assured her. “And if he’s hungry, you left breast milk in the fridge. You aren’t deserting him forever, you’re just going to work.”
“Maybe we should postpone this another week or so.” Leenie couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from Andrew, even for the four hours it would take her to drive to WJMM, do her two-hour midnight talk-show on the radio, set things up for her morning TV show and then drive home.
“No, we won’t postpone it,” Debra said firmly. “We can continue taking Andrew to the station every morning for your daytime show, but he shouldn’t be dragged out of his bed every night.” Debra crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her gaze. “Go to work, Leenie. You do your job and let me do mine.”
Sighing heavily, Leenie admitted her deepest fears. “But one of my jobs is being Andrew’s mother and if you do your job too well, my son will bond with you and not me.”
Huffing loudly, but following up with an understanding smile, Debra patted Leenie’s arm. “Andrew has already bonded with you. He knows you’re his mother. If I do my job well, and I’d like to think I’ve been doing that since the day we brought Andrew home from the hospital, then he’ll think of me as a favorite aunt or as a grandmother.”
“I’m being silly, aren’t I?”
“No, you’re being a good mother.”
“Am I a good mother? I’m not sure what makes a good mother. As you well know, I didn’t have one of my own. No mother at all raised me, good, bad or otherwise.”
“Jerry and I were parents to over fifty foster kids in our thirty years of marriage.” Debra sighed dreamily, as she always did whenever she mentioned her late husband, who had died two years ago at the age of sixty-three from a heart attack. “I’ve seen all kinds of mothers and I know a good one from a bad one.”
“Yes, I imagine you do. You were certainly an excellent role model for me when I lived with you and Jerry. I learned by watching the way you were with all of us foster children what a good mother is.” She had been fifteen when she’d been sent to live with Debra and Jerry Schmale, a young minister and his wife who’d been told they could never have children of their own and had decided they would give their love and time to unwanted, neglected kids of all ages. The three years she’d spent with the Schmales had been the best years of her childhood.