Mommy & Me

So today I am shedding a little "lyte" on Take Your Child To Work Day.  Many of you are unaware of this invention.  It's origins are with the feminist movement and it started as Take Your Daughter To Work Day to encourage girls to focus on their futures and careers as opposed to daydreaming about their wedding days.  It has morphed to include boys now because, well, it was just so sexist to only invite girls, never mind that boys are encouraged practically in uteri to focus on their careers.  But I digress.

What most parents don't want to admit is that one of perks to working outside the home is that it is outside the home.  People go to work to get away from their kids.  There!  I said it.  But it is true that many working mothers secretly are relieved when their little darlings are tucked away safely at daycare or with a nanny and they are free to be themselves and not "Mommy".

Being "Mommy" full time is incredibly hard and fantastically thankless.  I should know, I stayed home and it was one of the most difficult things I did.  One day I was a dedicated career professional, the next I was a fat, neurotic breast feeding machine.  I am not kidding, I had twins, so I had someone attached to me pretty much 24/7.  I felt like those chimpanzees you see on Animal Planet, climbing the trees with a baby chimp latched on.

Now, I could rhapsodize that it was all worth it.  It was, but that doesn't make the day to day drudgery any less.  I read a quote once, "The days are long, but the years are short."  It is so true when you are home full time with your kids.  The day seems endless, and when you are the only grown up in the room for most of it, you go a little crazy.

Before I had the twins, I used to see moms at the mall by my office, and I would be so jealous.  There they were, casually strolling with their little bundle of joy, no deadlines, no boss, no pressure.  Just mommy and me, eating lunch and shopping for cute little outfits at Baby Gap.  My Mother of Twins club urged me to take the twins to the mall when they were about 3 months old.  I had never sweated so much in my life.  And try maneuvering a stroller more than 5 feet long into a changing room.  Or breast feeding one baby while the other one lays screaming in the stroller; with old ladies in the food court tsk-tsking you and asking why you don't go into the bathroom and "take care of that."  I told them to take their lunch into a bathroom stall.

Some days I would fantasize about work.  Understand that I worked in collections.  That's how bad it would get.  Once the twins were weaned, I worked part time and loved it.  Conversations with grown ups!  Work that you could start and actually finish!  Performance reviews!  Lunch breaks where you could eat your food uninterrupted!  Heaven...

So thanks a lot feminists.  Now one day a year we are guilted into taking our kids to the one place that gives us break from them.  Next I will have take my husband with me to the hairdresser.