Mama Is Working It
Working mom is such a silly term to me. I’ve never met a mom who doesn’t work–like all of the time. I don’t care if you report to an office each morning or you work in your jammies from home or you pick up after people, run carpool and lives all day—I’ve never met a mother who didn’t “work” all of the time.
See, that’s the thing with this motherhood gig. It doesn’t ever really stop, you don’t get any breaks or sick days. Maybe if you’re lucky, you get an adult vacation every once in a while. But, if you have a small person or persons that you are responsible for growing into a fully formed person, your job is all day, every day.
Even when they’re not with you, you’re on duty. My favorite is when people ask what you do all day while they’re at school? Hmm…mostly I try to piece our lives back together from whatever craziness took place the previous afternoon. I try to prepare for the non-stop insanity that will ensue the minute they arrive home from school. If I’m super lucky, I’ll get to attempt to pick up some of the debris that litters my house and apparently regenerates itself on an hourly basis (although oddly, this doesn’t happen when they are not at home). If I’m really killing it, I’ll get to do anywhere from one to twenty-five loads of laundry. I never really know what I’m going to do when these little cherubs depart In the morning, sometimes I just sit here and look around and think, “I just wish there was something to do.” Right.
The school day is also the fastest six hours known to man. I realize that it didn’t feel that way when I was the little person sitting in the desk. But, once you are a parent that six-hour window is like the amazing race. The minute that school bell rings, you’re free–temporarily. You’ll utilize all of your resources rushing from location to location. You’ll try to get far too many things done in far too little time. I don’t care how good you are at prioritizing or time management, at least one thing on that totally doable list will take four times longer than it should and you’ll find yourself racing through the pickup line like a Nascar driver ready to pit.
When you work out of the home or from your home, you’ve got the added luxury of trying to compartmentalize your mom brain from your work brain. If you have a home office, you try to hide in there for as long as possible before you’re distracted by the mountain of laundry or the litany of dirty dishes. If you go to an office every day you have the added, really monumental, task of getting yourself ready and presentable whilst getting small people out the door. That this even happens at all several days of the week is truly miraculous and should be studied for the betterment of (wo)mankind. No matter how you work, Amazon Prime is your soul mate because you are able to source the enormous list of daily requests—a new mouth guard, a revolutionary war costume, rock salt (these are actual requests that I’ve received—I could NOT even begin to make this up). I’m not sure what any moms did before Amazon (did they actually go to all of these stores?), but I can tell you that I NEVER want to find out.
So, I think we should stop asking any mother of children if she works. She just told you she has two kids? She works. She’s spending her Saturday on a field bringing snacks to youth sports? She’s on the job. Her people show up alive and well and relatively clean to school every day? That’s because she’s a professional. She takes the business of her people seriously. And while, some days, it is either the world’s best job or its most thankless—every mom got a full-time job the minute she took on the role. Keep working it, mamas!