My brain holds a set of competing beliefs within it: first, that these people are jerks, and second, I don’t have what it takes to be home with my children every day, and am thus unsuited to the solemn work of motherhood. It is hard not to absorb, on vulnerable days, the voices that tell us that voluntarily putting your kids in someone else’s care is a moral failing; sometimes the call is coming from inside the house. I have a friend, also a working writer with young children in preschool and day care, and we text one another, in our low moments, that one of our greatest motivations for working is to forestall the possibility of spending all day, every day with our children.

One of my other friends with children tells me that she tries to remember that she is presently living in the golden years, the good old days, and to enjoy them while they are here. I think about this a lot. What are the things that I want to keep with me? A memory of my older daughter saying “bracenip” instead of “bracelet.” The three seconds, never enough, when the little one, who is always moving, always doing her comic run-waddle through the house, stops to be picked up and puts her head on my shoulder. I hope I can keep forever the feeling of holding them when they were small, a feeling of overwhelming physical happiness that I pray will get us through whatever familial struggles are sure to come.

So many moments of their childhood are already gone and lost to memory, and I’ve mostly made peace with the fact that I don’t get to retain them all. I’m working on making peace with something else, too: that being the mother I want to be means being away from them for many of those long hours and those short, swiftly fleeting days.