The Workplace
Mon, Jul 2, 2012
Finley clung to me this morning, her little chin wrinkled with lines of worry as her jaw clenched and her eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t wanna go to camp. I just want to be being with you on this day.”
It was not the way I wanted the day to go. I wanted the three girls to go happily off to camp so that they could get the attention they needed, I could get things done and, in essence, everything would be smooth and controlled. I had to make a decision.
The thing in my gut that comes out every once in a while, let’s call it guilt, made me relent. “Ok, you can come to work.”
What I should have done next was acknowledge that anything I accomplished was a bonus, rather than a guarantee.
As I sit here teetering on frustration, hysterical laughter and defeat, I’d love for you to entertain me (comfort me) with your tales of things not going as you planned…
Tags: Finley, life, working mom
Oh, there are so many examples. The 10k race I was planning for months and months with my best friend from high school that I haven’t seen in literally 20 years … that I cancelled morning of because Grace broke her collarbone the day before and I just wanted to be near her. That’s only the most recent. Or, the day I got to work in Providence (an hour away) and literally within 10 minutes got a phone from the school nurse about Whit – and turned around to go back. etc, etc, etc. Hope your day has some lovely bits, along with the frustration and defeat. xox
Oh, those phone calls. Hope you have a beautiful 4th of July, Lindsey.
Um .. so … pretty much no day goes as planned. And yes, anytime I am remotely caught up it’s a blessing. Mostly I’m ages behind …
So behind. We should remember the most exciting races are the ones where the announcer says, “And coming in from behind, watch, watch, and she’s taking the lead…”
Here’s to reclaiming the lead every once in a while.
Ah but I’ll bet Fin was SO happy!
She was, she truly was—in the end, so was I.
Once I was a 22 year old (girl) band director. My teeny tiny 40 member band was scheduled to march in a memorial day parade. We were to take a bus to this event. I had to order the bus. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I believed that Memorial Day was ALWAYS May 31st. The day of the parade arrived, it was not May 31st, no buses came to take my kids. The parade people were desperate for a band. They sent the ambulances and fire trucks to pick up my kids. Not exactly what I had planned.
I think I just fell a little bit in love with you Becky. Thank you for this!
I elent like that too. It’s complicated.
Day by day.
It took me FOUR HOURS to make unexpected edits in THREE PARAGRAPHS of a 700-word piece. The edits needed to be done right then — and then happened to be while my two kids were home on the first day of summer vacation.
You do the math on that one.
Ouch. xo