I’ve got an exciting week ahead of me. On Tuesday night I’m heading out for a 24 hour stay in NYC for a Mabel show. I love getting to that city because I went to grad school at NYU and it gives me the chance to pretend I’m leading that life again – even if only for 24 hours. Next bit of excitement comes on Saturday when I head out for a speaking gig at the International Camping Conference in Quebec City. Because I’m going to also help out Kim (our resident “Camp Mabel” program guru) it will be a longer stay – a whopping 36 hours.
I look forward to staying in a hotel room and having uninterrupted sleep. But this does not come without some major drawbacks.
The first issue is that I spend the entire time away obsessing over how the kids are doing and how daddy-o and caregivers are managing them all. I wonder if I’ve left enough detail on my three-page instruction list on the fridge. I contemplate whether the caregivers will have the instincts to know what to do if thrown a curve ball. I worry that the kids are waking up in the night crying for mama. I generally phone home three times in any 24 hour absence period. It’s a bit overboard, but it puts my mind at rest and allows me to focus on the work I need to be doing.
Last week daddy-o was away for six days. He phoned home once during that time period. Let’s compare our phoning home habits: I call once every five hours; he calls once every 144 hours. How is that for a stark contrast? Admittedly, he was virtually working around the clock, but I’ve worked those kinds of days and if I find time to go to the bathroom, I find time to check on how things are going on the home front.
It must be a real luxury to be away and not have a mama brain that nags you with irrational questions that you can do nothing about anyway: did the baby sleep through the night? Did the six-year-old eat the lunch that someone else packed for her? Did my son get picked up for his social group? Did daddy-o remember to look in their school agendas? Will they know where I put the rain boots if it’s a wet day? The list goes on and on….
The second drawback involves the amount of preparation involved in being away. I’ve had to re-arrange three car pools for my big 24 hour trip to NYC, and that is just scraping the surface of the organising that had to be done.
I remember when I was preparing to go into hospital to have my most recent baby. I was going to be out of commission for five or six days because it was my fifth c-section. I wrote out a very detailed list and highlighted which grown-up was responsible for what task. When I counted up the number of helpful family, friends and neighbours involved, the final head count was 17. There were exactly 17 names on that list and each received an e-mail outlining their assigned duties.
That list confirmed what we have all suspected and now know to be true: it takes 17 regular people to do the job of one mother!
RSS
RSS
Hmm, this post sure does make my weekend business trips seem like not such a big deal in comparison! Oh, perspective! Good luck this week, and good sleep!
I’ve been booked to do a freelance job for 10 days in December…reading your post scares me!! I’ve already given heads up to all our “support staff” but am wondering why when daddy goes away on business for a week I don’t get a “support staff”?
Oh I hear you on the support staff front! You may get a kick out of a blog post I made in July:
http://www.mabel.ca/community/blog/2008/07/smells-like-double-standard.html