A Heavy Night.

I returned to work yesterday.

I take my daughter to daycare
in time for the drop-off start time.
After that, I travel by car until I reach my workplace.
It takes about 40 minutes due to traffic.

From the parking lot to the building,
I have to go down a long, steep staircase.

If I were to fall from the very top...
It's a pretty dangerous staircase that I imagine every time.

After carefully going down the stairs
and entering the building, I climb up to the third floor via the stairs.

I change in the locker room,
and move to the fourth floor by stairs.

When I open the heavy door
with a sign that says "Keep Closed,"
I arrive at my workplace.

The smell the moment I open it is different every day.

I breathed in that air for the first time in two years.
Ah, it felt like this.
Thinking it was a smell that seemed calm,
I went to work feeling a bit anxious.

The four-hour shift
was over in the blink of an eye.

Yeah, somehow, huh?
I felt a sense of discomfort.

I got pregnant three months after I started working,
couldn't come to work due to morning sickness,
and after that, my poor health continued,
so I continued to take maternity and childcare leave.
I'm quite a troublesome newcomer.

And yet,
the senior who yelled at me on my first day,
and the office lady who was always scary,
have they all become different people?
They were so kind that I thought that.

Or have I become a different person?

No, perhaps
for the first two or three months after I was hired,
I worked like I was running around,
and even though I was pregnant, I took a long break,
so there is a possibility that they think,
"Maybe her mental health was affected."

Well, either way is fine.
If that's the case, then so be it.

Everyone is kind.
Everything is okay.

But, I was exhausted when I got home.

I, who love staying indoors,
worked for the first time in two years.

At night, after my bath,
when I said "I'm tired" and lay down,
my children came
crowding around me.

"I'll massage your shoulders,"
my eldest son started massaging my shoulders.

Me too, me too, said my second son.
My daughter too.

"Mom, you worked hard at your job for the first time in a while!"
"Good job!"
While being encouraged by them,
the three of them got on top of me as I lay face down,
and I was in a situation where I was being massaged.

I'm happy. It's heavy. ...But I'm happy.

Wanting to convey this feeling,
the words that came out of my mouth were:

"It's like I'm being massaged by someone with six hands."

I was completely ignored.
I'm so bad at expressing joy...

If I have time like this,
I thought that working wasn't so bad.

Perhaps,
this weight might be what they call happiness.
That was what I thought on a night while being wrapped in six hands.