Working Mother

For twenty-five years I ran a child-care business in my home.  I, also, taught classes for parents and child-care workers.  I often read "Working Mother" in my classes.  It touched the hearts of parents who knew the pain of leaving their children in someone else's care and it helped child-care workers to empathize with some parent's emotions.  I never wanted us, in the child care field, to feel we were somehow superior to parents who had to make the decision to work!

Working Mother  

As I sit here chained to my computer and phone, I steal a thousand quick glances at your pretty picture on the corner of my desk.  With each glance I breathe a silent prayer that God will be with you because I cannot.  I dream of baking cookies for after school snacks instead of making assembly-line coffee, each mug programed for the exact amount of sugar, sweetner, coffee and cream.

I dream of chairing PTA meetings instead of typing proposals and specifications.  I want to be there for you.  I want to participate in your life instead of watching from the sidelines and hearing about it secondhand.

I did not conceive you so that others could rear you.  I did not carry you nine months and then anxiously count fingers and toes so that I could get calls from school when you are sick or upset.  These calls send me into a frustrated frenzy because you must pour out your fears to another woman.

For now we do the best we can.  Weekends are OURS.  Cobwebs, laundry and yard work somehow take a backseat because cobwebs, grass and dirty clothes do not lose teeth, skin knees or outgrow blue jeans.  These weekends are crammed full of tiny lessons on self-esteem, values, maturing, quiet understandings and fun.  I pray that a strong bond is being built between us.  Mother to daughter, friend to friend, woman to little woman.

So here's to all the kids who don't feel in the least deprived.  Here's to the child care workers with nerves of steel and unending patience.  Here's to the schoolteachers and school secretaries who play surrogate mother.  Here's to the grandmas who stand in the gap between the three o'clock dismissal and the five o'clock rush hour.  And, here's to the "liberated" career moms who blow secret kisses to photographs while taking other people's messages and typing other people's memos.   by Marilyn Loeffel