My other full-time job

Tuesday Jan 13, 2009

Happy New Year everyone! I hope all the students had a good break, and had a chance to "check out" and rest their brains.

I had a vacation, of sorts, in Colorado with my 4 pre-teen kids (all are 11 years old, 2 girls and 2 boys). Although, as I am fond of saying, a vacation with my kids is no vacation. We did go skiing, sledding and tubing, which was loads of fun. But there was also the requisite, "She looked at me!" and "He touched me!" and "I had that first!" My favorite argument was over a brown couch pillow two of the kids were wrestling over. I picked up an identical brown pillow and threw it into the fray and said, "Here you go, now you can each have one!" Well, that just wasn't good enough! Then they were fighting over who saw the other one first, why they had to have that one, why the other one wasn't good enough, etc. I was ready to throw them naked and head-first out into a 3 ft. snowdrift.

The benefit during family vacations, though, is that I only have one full-time job. The rest of the time, I have two - being a mom (which is more like a 24x7 job) and my job as an in-house attorney at Sun. It can be quite a challenging balancing act. As a working mom, you are always on call, and you never know what might come your way. Here are some of my banner days as a working mom:

The disappearing quarter.

I arrived at work, still fairly new to Sun. I had a full day of meetings on my calendar. I had only been at work for about 30 minutes when I got a call from my son's school. My son had swallowed a quarter because he didn't want the teacher to see that he had it. The teacher said that he was still breathing (well, thank god!) but he kept gagging so the quarter must be "stuck." In a complete state of shock, I walked out to my assistant, handed her my calendar, told her to cancel everything, and drove to the school to pick up my son. We spent the entire day in the ER until they could remove the quarter from his esophagus (which took about 5 minutes). We still have the quarter in a little plastic cup.

Umbrella guilt.

We were racing out of the house to get to school on time, and I would have forgotten my head if it wasn't attached. I remembered on the way to school that the kids were supposed to have an "umbrella parade" at school that day and were each supposed to bring an umbrella. I had only one umbrella in the car and 4 kids (which adds up to a big battle), so I thought "Well, I won't give any of them an umbrella and maybe they won't remember." After all, it wasn't raining or anything. As we were walking up to the school with only seconds to spare, the kids said "Mama, we forgot our umbrellas! I can't believe we won't have umbrellas for the parade!" ALL of the other kids we saw had umbrellas. I felt queasy and faint. I went to work feeling completely guilty and felt like a terrible mom all day. When I picked the kids up and asked them how their day was they said it was great except that they didn't have an umbrella for the parade, and that they had to hold up a silly piece of folded paper instead. For YEARS after that one of my sons would say, every time he saw an umbrella, "Mama, remember that time we didn't have umbrellas for the umbrella parade?"

The Leprechaun Catcher.

One of my sons had an assignment to build a leprechaun catcher for school for St. Patrick's Day. I had asked my husband to help him build it, but somehow it didn't get done in time. I didn't realize this until we got to school and his teacher said that he was the only one who hadn't turned in his leprechaun catcher, and the kids in the class wouldn't get pizza if he didn't get it in before lunch. Just great. So I went to the office to see what I could use to cobble together a green elf trap. I got an industrial-sized soup can from the cafeteria trash, washed it out, and covered it with green paper. I had this colorful stuffed bird in my office that we got from the zoo not too long before (a lorikeet) and I taped that on top. (Leprechauns like colorful and shiny things, you see.) I then threw in a huge handful of pennies, and some cotton balls from the first aid kit to make it comfy. I raced back to the school and turned the blasted thing in at 11:45. The teacher thought it was great. At least the kids got pizza, and I didn't have to have leprechaun guilt along with umbrella guilt for years afterwards.

The "Clean" Dress.

My daughter came downstairs "ready" for school in the morning wearing a dress that I could swear she was wearing the day before (Sunday) to play outside in, while digging in the mud for bugs. I asked her if she was wearing the same dress and she said no. I asked her if she was sure, because I could swear I saw her wearing that dress yesterday. She said that Papa had washed it for her the night before, so it was clean now. (It must have looked clean from the front when she put it on.) I said "Ok, but you better not be wearing dirty clothes." She then turned around, and there was a big, round splotch of mud on the back of the dress, precisely where she had been sitting in the yard digging for bugs the day before. I then told her (while trying not to laugh at the evidence) that I knew she was lying to me about the dress. She seem surprised that I knew, until I told her to turn around and look in the mirror. Thus began a running battle over which clothes can be worn to school and which cannot - a battle we fight every day with all 4 kids. Forget easing into the day with a nice cup of java and the paper - our day starts with someone yelling, "I can't find any socks!" even though they were supposed to locate and set out all of their clothes the night before.

The Feigned Illness.

One of my daughters is a complete drama queen. I fully expect to see her on the silver screen one day. She is great at pretending she is sick and I swear she can even fake a fever. She was in this streak of having the school call me to take her home because she was "sick," so then I could work at home and she could watch TV or play on the computer. Well, I got tired of this game really quick. So, I picked her up from school and when we got home I told her to put on her PJs and she was going to stay in her bed. She argued and pleaded - it's not dark yet, this is boring, I feel better now, etc. I told her that if she was so sick that I had to leave work to go pick her up and take her home, then she was sick enough to stay in bed. End of the feigned illness phenomenon.

The Enhanced Clothes.

Warning: not for the squeamish! When the kids were very small, there was one very special morning when I arrived at work with vomit, spit, blood, pee and poop (all from the kids, of course) all over my clothes after a variety of unfortunate events. I then had to wear my workout clothes the rest of the day at work or be seen as a social pariah (lucky for me I had my gym bag with me!). After that day, I always kept a complete set of work attire in the trunk of my car for such occasions. Of course, I never needed it, but it was nice to know it was there, just in case.

Notwithstanding the extra work and challenges that come with being a mom (and especially a working mom), it's a job I wouldn't give up for anything in the world. I love my job as an in-house attorney at Sun, but nothing is more important to me than my job as a mom. I always watch that sappy movie It's a Wonderful Life over the holidays, where Jimmy Stewart gets to go back and see what things would be like if he had never been born. It always makes me wonder what things I'm doing now will matter in 50 years. The work I do at Sun is very important, but it's hard to imagine any agreement I'm working on still being in effect 50 years from now. Most agreements we entered into 10 years ago are obsolete by now. But my kids will be alive 50 years from now, and everything I've taught them, shared with them, and experienced with them will be there too. And they wouldn't have that stigma about umbrellas if it wasn't for me.