I Hate Being A Working Mother
There were so many questions in those teary eyes, and I couldn’t do anything apart from reading them helplessly like an unprepared examinee. My family calls me melodramatic.
My husband says I am over reacting to usual household situations, despite all of this, somewhere a mother buries herself daily and lets go of her crying child to leave for office. She sheds off her weeping daughter from her shoulders to hold the responsibility of this new working mother culture.
To everyone, it’s all for her, so that she can afford all the luxuries when she grows up but what’s more luxurious for an 18 month old than playing with her mom, sleeping on her lap or seeing her with those half opened sleepy eyes?
To give her costly clothes, best of schools and all that she asks for, are we not snatching her childhood and making her more vulnerable to all the materialistic things? Even if we try our best, how can we ever explain the importance of “being there” to her when she was left ailing in fever due to some official engagements of her parents.
She was 4 months old when I rejoined my office, but even today, 14 months past that day, neither of us is accustomed to this daily practice of me leaving for office. There are days when she is sleeping and I sneak out like a rat. Still every morning the biggest fear we have, what if she gets up and sees me leave?
Half of the times she is up and howling while I hand her over to her grand mom for the next 12 waking hours of the day and for me, she is still shouting “Mamma!!! Mamma!!!" While I run without looking at her but continue to hear her shouting throughout the day, till I reach back and see her smiling to welcome me.
Yes, she is my first child, but then loving your child and wanting to take care of all her big and small things is not too much that a mom asks for. Can’t ever forget those post-delivery office days that were similar to my play school days, only difference was that then I had a consoling mother to make me understand how important it was to go and now I have to console myself and my daughter.
Do I really understand how important it is to go? I don’t think I will ever be able to understand that. With all the support from family, with my mother-in-law taking care of my daughter along with a sitter in my absence, can they ever fill in the gap and emptiness that I have left for not being able to raise my daughter? Tell all those lullabies that I have learnt from my mom?
Being raised up by a full time mother, I know how helpful it was to always have your mom by your side to understand life at every new turn.
Many a times, it is only about your child and if she is being taken care of and nothing to do with how she is being raised or who is raising her and what all she is eating. The idea is to do it yourself, like a learning child, who wants to do everything on her own, even if that means spilling water on the floor, or getting injured with something harmful, but the idea is to do it yourself, to learn and more so to enjoy while learning.
I too, want to be that learning mother, who would love to fall while learning and tell those funny stories to my young daughter 15 years from now.
But when you plant a rose, you still keep it under the sun for its nurturing. You pet a dog and still tame it with a stick, you have a loyal horse but to ride, you keep a whip in your hand. All good things come with some amount of pain with it, and this is my pain.