Mom Who?

Max is my last baby and I don’t have the time to enjoy him.   

To Max, I am the person that takes him in and out of his car seat, the high chair, and his crib.  I’m the one who pulls him out of the fireplace, the kitchen cupboards, and the first-floor windowsills.  As far as Max is concerned, I am the ruiner of all things fun.  If he could talk, he would tell you so.  But for now, he only grunts and sticks out his tongue through a mouthful of pacifier.

I don’t know if it’s because he’s number six or if it’s because I’m nearly 40, but I’m having a harder time keeping up with Max than I ever remember having keeping up with any of the other five.  If there’s something dangerous, dirty, or ding-a-ling to do, he’s on it!  From 8 in the morning until 8 at night, he’s just busy, busy, BUSY!  It’s like Kenny says, “That baby just doesn’t know how to be smart!”

Luckily for Max, he has a whole circus of people who are trained to save him from himself.  I work 30 hours a week, so I’m not always the one who has to administer the Heimlich or get his head or other body part unstuck.

And this is where the guilt of not being home all day every day gets to me.

The flip side of being a working mother? 

Max will stay with anyone. 

The other flip side? 

Well, Max will stay with anyone.

Last weekend, a friend of mine dropped by to see me.  (But if you asked my kids, they’d tell you she dropped by to see them.)  She’s the toddler’s version of the Pied Piper.  Kids flock to her like she’s the ice cream truck.  Within moments of arriving, she plopped down on the floor and a few minutes after that, Max and Kenny were all over her.  Max was kissing her (albeit through his pacifier) and Kenny was asking her to sleep over in the tent he had just set up in the middle of the living room.  I admired how, at that moment, she was the human swing set.

And it’s not just monkey bars Katy (aka just plain old Katy--though there’s nothing plain old about her) that Max easily attaches himself to.  Just a few days later, it was a young college student.  Never mind that Max had never met her, he was pulling on her skirt and climbing up her legs. 

These moments are the ones that make me wonder if being a working mother is really working for me.

It hurts that I’m not his whole world. So, I’ve come to the realization that this whole modern woman thing is a bunch of crap.  It’s a lot of work to get out there and make the money to buy that bacon, only to have to come home and fix it too.  And a lot of the time, there isn’t much gratification in doing it.  It seems the only constructive criticism I get is negative. 

“I don’t have any clean pants” or “What are we having for dinner?” are often the greetings I get when I walk in the door.  This trade off might be worth it if I making a difference at work.  But I’m not all that important there either . . . unless you count cleaning mold out of the microwave an important task.

For now, I tell myself that I need both worlds to appease the Sybil in me.  The polished professional that goes out between 9 and 4 and the white trash me that yells, “Don’t sit on your brother’s head without your underwear!” 

As for Max and his ability to stay with anyone, well, maybe that’s more my problem than it is his.