Tag Archives: working moms

Crying Fowl

Sometimes it sucks being a working mom. Like when you say to your incredibly excited daughter, who is dressed in her home-made Condor shirt and ready to leave for the zoo two hours before it opens:

“I wish I could be there today.”

And she says, simply, “Then come.”

It never gets easier.

“I can’t.” My voice is as cheerfully apologetic as I can make it.

“Why not?”

She knows I have to work. I’ve been working Saturdays since I went back to retail three years ago. This is not a practical question. It’s an existential one, and I can’t answer it to her satisfaction. “Because I have to sell diamonds to rich people” won’t do, that’s for sure.

“I just can’t.”

“Why don’t you call work and tell them you’re sick?” She says this like it’s a brilliant, unheard of solution.

“Because I’m not sick. So that would be like stealing from them.”

“No, it’s not.”

We clearly need to do some work on her moral compass.

“Honey, I have to go in. You’ll have a great time with Daddy.”

She’s not happy, and neither am I. But it’ll have to do. I’ll hear about everything tonight, in the half-hour we have together before she goes to sleep.

In the meantime, I’ll imagine her at the zoo in her handmade shirt, holding Mike’s hand and skipping to the “World of Birds” show.

And I’ll try not to be too grouchy with the people, featherless and bland, who inhabit my world today.

Pardon the Delay

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OK, so two years is a pretty long coffee break. Especially when you’re a tea drinker.

What can I say? Working part time, raising a daughter, being a wife, having a home, trying to exercise, learn Mandarin, volunteer at my kid’s school, keep two pets alive and have a moment now and then to read a non-first-grade-level book–it’s a lot. This seemed like the lowest priority, and it just fell by the wayside. Fell and broke both legs. Did I mention the concussion?

But I had an awakening recently. It’s not working for me. Not writing–or having any creative output at all–is making me brittle. I’ve got to get back to it. For me. No one else much cares, but a life with all work and no words feels hopelessly incomplete. So I am hobbling back to Thumbstumbler, casts on both legs–figuratively speaking, people!–and a little pink in the cheeks. I suppose I’ve exposed myself as a dilettante.

Or a human. You choose.

Either way, not writing is not an option anymore. Something in me cracked when, the other day, I had to give someone a link to this blog. I hadn’t looked at it in over a year, but just logging in and seeing “No Towel for Owl” all hung out to dry like that, the last post in a series that wasn’t meant to stop, well, it made me melancholy. And irritated. It really doesn’t take much time to do this writing thing. Just a little commitment, some nimble scheduling, maybe one fewer “Grace and Frankie” episode. Still, I’ve been known to be a quitter in matters of personal endeavor, and that lone suspended owl reminded me how much I enjoyed doing this and how much I’d lost by letting it go.

Even then I worried. “There’s just no time. Where will I fit it back in?”

Then today I was at the Natural History museum with MJ–she’s six now–and I had a moment of clarity. I’d just snapped a picture of her, standing before her beloved Bird Gallery, crooning over her favorite taxidermied fowl (the Golden Eagle, in case you’re wondering), and I thought of that dangling, well-loved owl. And all the things that had come before.

And the things that are yet to come.

And I knew I had to find time.

So here I am. Because I do work part-time, and clean my house, and raise my kid, and love my husband, and read books, and jog, and volunteer, and try to be a friend, and watch too much TV, and grocery shop, and meditate. And it’s all a lot, and, as a result, I do none of it as well as I’d like.

But if I’m not writing about it I’m giving up the one thing that can make all of that OK.

And that would be for the birds, indeed.

Bricked In

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Snapshot of this moment: I am sitting in the breakroom at work, surrounded by tupperware containers and an assortment of old condiments. I am eating a peanut butter sandwich with homemade jam. It is delicious. Still, someone forgot to order paper towels, so I am using a tissue as a napkin. This lack of basic supplies has taken an already bad mood and made it worse.

My boss asked earlier if I might be willing to work a fourth day every week. We are, she said, woefully short staffed. Taking a deep breath, I told her yes. Yes, although it will take my already scant time with my daughter and make it scanter. Yes, although this job numbs my brain and makes me, at least occasionally, hopeless for the whole human race. Yes, because we need the money and that’s a fact. Times are tough. Comparatively so, at least.

And they’re about to get tougher, at least for one small girl at my house.

This morning, when MJ–in a repeat performance of incredible endurance–cried about my going to work, I told her, “you know my great, great, great grandmother had six kids. And she had to work building bricks out of mud every day. Just to put food on the table.”

“Out of mud?” MJ replied.

“In the cold.”

“Whoa,” said my daughter, suitably chastened.

This story, I should add, is true. Or true-ish. The ancestor in question did spend some days making adobe bricks in exchange for food when living with the Mormons in Utah. It’s a small detail in an exciting and hair-raising tale, but it may not be totally accurate to portray her as solely and purely a brick smith. Still, her road was hard– her husband’s, too. I figure if they could survive starvation, wolf attacks, Indian abductions, and the shockingly ill treatment of the early Mormon leadership, then certainly I can survive working an extra day in high end retail until my husband is working again.

So maybe I told the mud brick story for myself.

And maybe it worked.

Still, I shed a couple of tears into my Trader Joes pretzels as I sat here. Fortunately no one was here to see it happen. Also, I happened to have a tissue to hand.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Sums of Manicky

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If this blog is the second kid I never had, I’m guilty of some serious neglect.

I’m sorry. I want to be more regular about writing. I have been in the past. Why, back in the day, when I was home with MJ all the time, I was a veritable posting fool. Before she went to a co-op preschool, that is. Back when she napped! But now, this life! The work–in high-end retail at holiday season–the fundraising, the childcare, the housecleaning, the pet chasing, the board meetings, the volunteer days at MJ’s school. The giant event I am planning for same. The need to consume great amounts of “Sons of Anarchy” on my scant downtime. I swear to God, there aren’t two spare moments to rub together. At least two spare moments when I have a functional brain cell left for creative thought. I’m a zombie. A never-stopping, always-behind, constantly number-tallying, guilty-binge-TV-watching zombie.

Even now, I have nothing to say. I am tapped. Zapped. Sapped. My every moment, in these last two weeks, has been consumed with selling raffle tickets, (when I am not at work), and selling overpriced jewelry, (when I am.) In between I try to sell my family on the idea that I am a competent wife and mother. They’re buying, but only because I’m the only shop on the block. God forbid a Walmart should open up next door. Figuratively speaking. Although what a figurative Walmart looks like is anyone’s guess.

Finally, I clean poop. Because our new cat has feces that stink viciously, absurdly, brutally, like dead bodies on crack. If we don’t scoop it out right away the entire house becomes an intolerable, unbreathable haz-mat zone.

He also likes to pad around in our sinks and toilet bowls, leaving dirty little footprints on the porcelain.

So glad we got a second animal.

Anyway. I just wanted to tell you that I’m here–that the blogger in me is still alive, if currently buried in receipts, petty cash, and five-dollar raffle tickets. She will re-emerge. Probably after December 7th, when this damn event will be over, and definitely after December 25th, when the other damn event (otherwise known as Christmas) will be similarly behind us.

Until then, exhausted, distracted, and enfeebled by her desire to raise funds, she will poke her head up only occasionally, with some effort, and with predictably mediocre results.

Then she’ll poke it back down, to watch her favorite motorcycling sexpots run more guns.

A girl’s got to decompress somehow.

Raffle ticket, anyone?

Card-Again!

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Even Picasso must’ve come up empty sometimes. And I’m no Picasso.

I’m starting to run out of ideas. For postcards, that is. Somewhere along the line Myra-Jean persuaded me that three was not enough to assuage her grief at my newfound part-time employment. I should be leaving her four. Four postcards, three days a week. I’ve been working for about a month and a half now. You do the math.

No? I’ll do it for you.

Seventy-two. That’s how many postcards I’ve made so far. Seventy-two original drawings. I’m running out of subject matter!

I’ve drawn cats, dogs, owls, camels, elephants, sheep, snails, and flowers. I’ve gone exotic, drawing sloths, okapis, and octupi. I’ve crayoned pastoral scenes, gardens, planets, and the sun. I’ve made up creatures. I’ve drawn MJ herself. And still, three nights a week, I have to come up with more.

The results are getting increasingly random.

Last night, for example, I started with food:

Then moved on to a landscape. Which is not my strong suit. The result looked perfunctory.

Next there was my old standby: a dog. But I put a flower in front of him, to change it up a bit.

Because, you know, dogs and flowers are a logical pairing. Kind of like white wine and fish.

Finally, I sketched a dinosaur. Not a very good one, I might add. It looked more like a seal with legs. Plus, I forgot the tail until the last minute, then squeezed it in on the right. To deflect from this obvious error I put a cat on its back. Walter. Why not? At least up there he’ll be safe from Mina.

I tried to make the accompanying text expand on of the image.

It didn’t really work, but that’s another conversation.

The point is, I don’t know how I’m going to keep this up. And I have to. The postcards are the only thing keeping MJ from having a nervous breakdown on the days I work. But I’m getting a nervous breakdown making them! I need ideas. I’m not an artist. I was a philosophy major, for God’s sake.

Perhaps each card should feature a fragment of Socratic dialogue.

Or maybe I should move on to collage.

Whine and Dine

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Commission sales get ugly when foot traffic is slow. Grown adults edge each other out to stand near the door. Sleek smiles mask desperate intent. Kind faces morph quickly to mean ones. The quarry is all, and it’s in short supply.

A new salesperson, in this situation, is always resented. It’s rarely shown overtly. As I have more than once been on the “giving” end of such resentment, however, I know it is there. I am the new wrench in the works, my very presence taking sales away from other clerks. And this leads to a dilemma. If I lay back I will be better liked, but will not make my sales plan. If I sidle forward faster than my peers and snare the man walking in the door I may make a sale. But I am painting a target on my back. In Tiffany blue, perhaps. But a target nonetheless.

Such is the way of high-end retail sales. My co-workers and I display grace, kindness, and prowess, much of it real, to the clients we help. Beneath these, however, co-exist thick veins of fear, spite, and competitiveness. Each sale made by another is a blow to our chances. You win? I lose. The system is rigged for ill-will.

My advice? Whenever you meet a salesperson who is working on commission, know one thing up front. They are lying. Or call it acting, if you prefer. I don’t care how sincere they seem. No matter how genuinely they furrow their brows when you tell them of your troubles, how brightly they smile at your recent promotion, or how assiduously they offer you water or tea. They are plotting the whole time. They’re out to get you. You are a meal ticket. You are prey. To even the best, even the kindest of them. They cannot help it.

This is the world I have rejoined. A far cry from the playground, one might say.

In the midst of this, for lunch, come MJ and Mike. I have asked them to make the trip, after a heartbreaking parting this morning. Suddenly, here is humanity again. My co-workers smile at the presence of my kid, her exuberant squeals of delight at the “fancy things,” her shy grins at the security guards, her red lemonade, (“it has cucumber!”), her skipping gait across the pale carpeted floor. Isn’t it nice? We’re all a family here, right?

My actual family and I retire to the back, and for an hour I am a mom again. Myra-Jean has been to the Natural History Museum, and brings a new matching game with a bug theme. It is multi-pieced and impossible; we play it happily on the small break-room table, amidst piles of old newspapers and leftover chips.

“I like your nice kitchen,” MJ says to no one in particular. She’s nuts. The place is a dive. But whatever.

“Thanks, honey. You can have lunch with me here any time you want.” It isn’t true, of course. This will probably never happen again. School will start, and anyway, Pasadena is a hike from where we live. But I can say it. After all, I am a salesperson. I can sell a bit of hope.

When we are done eating I tell MJ it is time for me to clock back in. She looks at me, uncomprehendingly. “What’s clock?”

“I have to go back to work.”

“But you’re coming home.”

I twist my lips regretfully. “I can’t.”

The effect is immediate. Her smile reverses itself, cheeks flush, and tears begin to flow. Loud ones. Lots of them. My manager, making copies nearby, looks over briefly, then turns away. She’s a mom. She’s not mad. Still, this is less than ideal, and we both know it.

“I want to stay with you!” Myra-Jean screams.

Commanding myself not to cry, I attempt silliness. “But you can’t work here! You’re too little!”

The joke is a flop. This is getting bad. There are about to be two of us in total meltdown, and one of us will not improve her performance evaluation in the process.

Under my breath I mutter to Mike “You’ve got to get her out of here.”

He nods. He knows. He probably saw before he came here that this was exactly how it would end. Me and my brilliant ideas. “Take your daughter to work day.” And fully traumatize her. Nice.

We rush MJ to the front door as I try to distract her with my face, my keys, the “magic flowers” on the countertops, anything I can think of. Her cries grow louder, sailing over the heads of shoppers and workers like little kiddie drones. Duck!

To make matters worse, small bits of tortilla chip, which MJ had started chewing right before I’d broken the bad news, drip from her weepy mouth. They’re going everywhere. They’ll ruin the rug.

“Get her outside,” I whisper urgently to Mike, then turn to the security guard: “Sorry.” I gesture to the floor, which looks like a taqueria. “I’ll clean it up in a second.” He looks down politely, then shakes his head. It’s fine. Just get your banshee kid out of here. Please.

The last I saw of MJ– through the big glass doors–she was attempting to hurl herself out of Mike’s arms, reaching her hands back towards me, tears sheeting her face. “Goodbye, Mama!” she keened. “Goodbye.”

And then they were gone.

For a moment I stood there. Holding. Holding. Then, stooping over carefully, I picked up my daughter’s chips where they lay, damp and listless, in the entranceway below. Slowly I rose, cleared my throat, and walked, head down, towards the back. Punching in my code, I barged the door open and fled to the break room. And breathed. And breathed. And did. Not. Cry.

Walking to the table, I picked up my daughter’s lemonade, now sweaty, pale, and nearly empty. Lifting it grimly, I took the last sip. No cucumber. Sigh.

As I turned to go back to the sales floor a co-worked entered and breezed past me. “Your daughter is so cute,” she said over her shoulder. Then she was off to the manager’s office. Probably celebrating her latest sale. Asshole.

“Thanks,” I said after her, forcing a smile.

Then, tossing MJ’s leftovers into the trash, I headed out to the floor. Four more hours to go.

Let the show begin.

Hired and Tired

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Saturday morning I said goodbye to Mike and MJ, left the house in my new black suit, and drove to Pasadena to work the counters of high-end retail. It’s a job I did for years before MJ was born. Although I excelled at it, and my company treated me kindly, I swore never to return. Mostly it’s the dress code. I abhor hose. But it’s also the whole rich people thing. And the chain store thing. And the mean-spirited nature of for-commission sales. And the long hours. And the–OK, I could go on. But I won’t. Suffice it to say that, a year after my daughter was born, I gave all of my suits to Goodwill.

“No matter what work I go back to someday,” I told myself confidently, “it won’t be that. Plus, I’ll never be a size zero again.”

It turns out only the latter was true. Now I have to buy all new suits. In a larger size, of course.

Because I am back. Three days a week. That’s what will get me benefits, and right now we need them badly. A fact that hasn’t stopped me from feeling pretty sorry for myself.

It’s not that I mind working, per se. Like most of us, I’ve done it my entire adult life. I do, however, long for work that utilizes my brain, creativity, and twisted, occasional wit. But I still don’t know what that work is. Funnily, being a stay-at-home mom is the closest I’ve come.

It’s the hours of this job that are the hardest. When I say goodbye to MJ in the morning, now, it is for the day. I don’t get home until nearly eight, at which point she is asleep. I’m losing, then, nearly half of my time with her. For someone who has been with her nearly every moment of her life, this is no small thing.

And I knew it would be tough.

But the pain of it, on that first day, surprised even me.

I was fine during the day. Lunchtime, with its quiet break room, almond butter sandwich, and buzzing fluorescent lights, was melancholy, but otherwise I stayed busy. “I’m OK,” I told myself. “I’m doing this.”

It was when I got in the car to drive home that things fell apart. I didn’t see it coming, either. It was like one of those stomach flus that arrive out of nowhere–one moment you’re fine and the next you’re heaving into your Crate and Barrel waste basket.

There I was, leaving the parking garage, fuming to myself about their $7 charge. “Rip off,” I muttered. “What’s the point of even working?” I pulled out into Pasadena traffic. Made a left on Green Street. Stopped for some pedestrians. I dialed Mike on the cell phone–perhaps I could at least speak to MJ before she went down. No answer. Dropping my phone dejectedly in the cupholder I looked up. There was a group of women in the crosswalk. All were blonde and snugly dressed, but of disparate ages. Maybe they were related. It was hard to tell, because all five of them were sporting huge quantities of plastic surgery. One of them, with lips like tire rubbers and a face like pale jeggings, let her gaze drop on me. Mostly in a “you are going to stop, aren’t you?” way.

Our eyes met. It’s then that I started sobbing.

Each of her companions, now, turned to gaze at me–five exotic gazelles scanning the urban tundra. One cocked her head as she stared. “She’s doing something weird with her mouth,” her face seemed to say.

It was all I could do not to shout “so are you!”

But I didn’t. I was too busy crying.

I cried all through busy Pasadena. I cried on the freeway ramp. I cried down the 134, and onto the 2. I cried, smudging rivers off of my face, as I drove into Mt. Washington. I sobbed as I passed the spot where I got my ticket. (I also stopped, of course. I was upset, not stupid.)

When I got home I cried at Mike for a good long while. Then I peeled off my work clothes, dropping them carelessly on the wooden arm of a chair, and trudged, in my underwear, into MJ’s room.

Out like a light, as she should be.

Kneeling by her bed, I stroked her hair, adjusted her covers, and wiped my face on her stuffed animals. Snuff, snuff. It was a pathetic picture. Especially because I was wearing a garment–recently acquired at Target–that can only be described as a Granny thong. I got it for yoga. Which, I wept to myself as I gazed down at my garb, I would never do again now that I work.

And so it goes. It wasn’t until I had written a self-pitying epistle of great length and emotionality to a friend of mine that I was snapped out of my spell. She is in Brazil right now, and wrote back, via e-mail, quite immediately:

“You need to grow up a little about this,” she started. She went on to remind me of my good fortune in landing this particular job. “Maybe it’s just that I’m in a poor country, the backs of people being broken by inflation and NO jobs. A job to support their families? People would kill for that.”

And I know she’s right. I’m going to get grateful. In a few days. For now, though? I am an emotional wreck with one wrinkled suit, another shift to work tomorrow, and a daughter I can’t stop kissing.

The good news? She’s fully potty trained. At last. It happened just this week, seemingly out of the blue. Maybe she’s more ready for this change than I know. Whatever the case, I’m glad I won’t have to teach any new caregivers the “drip catcher” technique.

Thank God for small favors.

And good benefits.

And the resilience of humans everywhere.

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