Over breakfast this morning my middle one pipes up:
‘Mummy, when are we going on holiday?’
I explain we are going in 2 weeks. We are off to North Norfolk for a week. We do it every year, it’s an awesome week, and come rain or shine we embrace it. That’s the nature of a true British holiday. It always makes me laugh as we load the car that we pack swimming costumes, rain macs, sun cream and wellies. No one knows what will be used, and typically it will be all of it.
She then continues:
‘Are you working until we go?’
I explain that yes, Mummy will be at work every day until we go but then we will have a fabulous time all of us together, and Mummy won’t need to go to work from Norfolk.
It goes on:
‘What do you actually do when you go to work Mummy?’
This is where the hard bit starts. ‘Well’, I say, ‘I have meetings, I send emails, I talk to lots of people about the company and their careers and I make some phone calls too’. Suddenly my working day sounds ridiculous. It sounds lame and feeble and translates into a day of nothing as I try and sound sensible to my child. I know this won’t be the end.
‘So you go to work to meet people and send some emails?’
‘Yes’ I say as I confirm back to her. I am dreading the words as they fall out of her mouth.
‘But Mummy, that’s what you do at home.’
Oh no. In that second I feel like the worst mother ever. I suppose in her mind, I do indeed regularly appear to have a phone in my hand and we do meet friends.
It is at this moment, that I try and compute this entire conversation in my mind. Part of me feels my job seems very pointless when described to a child and the other part of me is telling myself off for emailing from my phone too much when I should be reading bed time stories.
The juggle of the WoMo goes on! I am just glad it’s not term time and hopefully this will all be forgotten by September. Otherwise I can see the conversation that will take place with her friends.
‘Do you know my Mummy goes to work to meet people and send emails’.
As I run this scenario through my mind I dream of exciting sexy jobs giving my daughter the chance to say something like:
‘Do you know my Mummy is a spy. I can’t tell you anything else because it is too secret’.
Now that would make me the coolest Mum at school.
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