48 hours, Part II

Man, those were longer weeks offline than I expected!

Where was I?

Oh yeah, right.  So, check it out, my boss surprised me.

She grinned and grudgingly agreed to not smoke in her car.  As we walked to the garage, she offered what I could only take as sincere congratulations.  There were no snarky remarks about my breeding.  No jabs at my age (though I suspect she thinks I'm a few years younger).

A few minutes into the walk, I could sense the real issue, and I cut to the chase:

"I want to make it clear, I fully intend to come back to work - with the full disclosure that I plan on taking the longest maternity leave possible."

Her smile got warmer, as she stated "Well, fuck, you better come back, we would hunt you down if you didn't."

For the next two hour drive home through wretched DC traffic I learned a bunch of things.  Her maternity leave was a full year ("they're always sick when they're infants, you might as well stay home if you can").  She never thought she would have her only child - also a daughter - until a psychic told her there was a spirit who was waiting on her.

I learned that she values my opinions to some extent.  She bounced all kinds of work ideas on me.  She shared a little too much in my opinion of what she thought of some of my colleagues. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

We actually didn't spend most the ride talking about babies and pregnancy.  But where it came up, she learned a few things too - although most of the story remains crouched in mystery.  Yes, I have had a million failed pregnancies.  I always believed there was a missing person in my home.  I've been feeling tired and wretched but I'm really good at compartmentalizing work and my personal life.  She truly believed I should burn some candles to tell this baby to stick around.

When I got home late that night, a bit of the weight of this pregnancy was lifted.