Working Mom

Being a working mom is laying your clothes out the night before, waking up before your alarm, and always hanging your keys on the same hook. It's about having a system in place so you can make it through the mundane tasks as efficiently as possible, saving all of your extra, spontaneous, greedy time for your baby.

It's about walking to the bus stop while your previously-organized mind, the one that layed your clothes out the night before, starts disassembling itself, like you're messing up the rubic's cube that you just spent hours solving. The square that plans your baby's meals is over there next to the square that remembers your computer password, and the part of your brain that remembers to put the dish detergent on the high shelf out of baby's reach is all mixed up with the part that gets you to your meeting on time and schedules appointments. By the time you get to work you've thought of so many things and turned them around so many times that you just want someone else to put the yellows with the yellows and the greens with the greens, the reds with the reds. Smooth and shiny. Organized. Neat.

You're at work now and you wonder how long they are going to let you work here, you with your rubic's cube brain. You who remember to set out your baby's meals every night, but forget your lunch every single day. Although you don't mind running out to buy lunch, because it's your only time to leave your computer. Even at lunch you sit at your computer, running through the other things you have to complete during business hours - scheduling doctor appointments for your baby, ordering shoes for your baby online because you don't want to use your free time at home dragging your baby to the store, figuring out childcare, answering email. You don't love spending lunch this way, but you don't hate it, and you know you're lucky that you have a good job and get to sit at a computer so you can do these things on your lunch hour.

You might feel lucky for the adult interaction during the day, except you are busy, so busy. Too busy to eat lunch out or to hang out because now more than ever you don't want to work late or take work home with you, because your baby is at home, and at home you try to focus on only one thing. You're better at that at home, and you wonder if Work gets jealous. You're playing favorites, and you wonder if Work feels left out.

You're a working mom and you feel like a martyr, even though you realize that is unbecoming in a person. You don't even qualify as a martyr, you with the luxury of choices, your supportive family, your college education, a job you like. So what is it that you want?

You want what every other hard-working person wants. You want the world to take notice and look at you with kindness and generosity. You want this world to turn to the next world and tell it to look at this working mom. She is working so hard. She doesn't get enough sleep. She's worried about her work. Her baby cries after her every morning when she leaves. She's trying her best and it is so hard.

Then you would like the world to buy you a beer, give you a high five and tell you you're doing a good job. You're working hard. We notice. Thank you.