Hello, My Name is …

Normally I hate wearing nametags of any kind. But I found myself oddly excited to wake up and put a badge on a stretchy string around my neck for two and a half days when I attended an out-of-town conference last week.

With the exception of one overnight stay with my husband more than a year ago, it was the first time I had been away from at the same time. And it was the first time I had been “alone,” out in the world totally on my own, in more than four years.

I have to say, it was pretty exciting. Aside from the fact that the conference gave me a chance to hang out with other people who also do what I do for a living and to spend a couple days talking exclusively about that, the time away from home also offered a brief break from the intensity of working full-time and co-parenting a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old.

While I missed tucking in Isaac and Lucy for two nights, I have to admit that I relished saying a quick goodnight and I love you via iPhone and then curling up in a quiet hotel room in a king-sized bed that for two nights was my own private island.

The prospect of being away from Lucy and Isaac for a couple days was daunting. I wasn’t worried about them – they’d be at home with their dad, after all, and the only part of their routine that would be changing would be that he would be picking them up from school for a couple days instead of me. Mostly I was worried about myself, selfishly. I wasn’t sure I remembered how to be me without the relatively new mothering duties in the mix.

What I learned was that the old me is still alive and kicking beneath the harried mom surface. The trick now is to make contact with the old me more often without having to leave town to find her.