Sharing Saturday
I love the summer light. My body wakes when the sun rises, and in the summer, that's around 5:30 am. These are halcyon days for me – I feel happy and productive when I rise at dawn and start my day in the quiet of the morning. I also love the early evening full light, with the cicadas drowning out the sounds of the kids in the streets. Long hours of beloved daylight stretching into night. My mind and my body feel sated.
Basking in this light recently reminded me that this coming fall, my daughter will start leaving for middle school quite early in the morning. My teen son already takes off for high school before I am out of the shower, and when my daughter starts leaving as early as my husband, around 7:00 am, it will be just me and my 4th grader for a long stretch until the elementary school bus rumbles up the block.
I mused about this with my son last week, happily anticipating the day fast approaching when I could stop subverting my biorhythms and start my work day (at home) at 7:30 am. This is my best time of day, the time when I am most productive, and filled up with anticipation for the day and work ahead.
But instead of looking forward to this quiet time in our house next fall, my son looked at me like a deer in headlights, burst into tears and wrapped his little arms around my midsection for a good five minutes. So much for my work plans.
I have to remember that he has not been separated from his sister since they were very young and he was in preschool and she was already a big girl in kindergarten. He loves her, and she loves him (although she'd tell you that he is a pain.) In fact, they most remind me of a wonderful Judy Blume book, "The Pain and the Great One," in which the parents (sages that they are) get the squabbling brother and sister to realize how much, in fact, they love and rely on each other.
While I am counting how many email messages I will be able to attend to before 8:00, he is worried about being all alone without the support of his sister, the person who most gets him. While I am gleefully thinking about how this extra morning hour will allow me to add a client, my son is glumly thinking about what he is going to do when both his sister AND his mother abandon him in the morning.
Sigh. Another dilemma for the working mom.
I have been waiting to get back to my preferred work schedule for 15 years. While I work in a city where long hours are admired and expected, as a consultant, I can mostly put in those hours when it best suits me. For me, that would be the early morning. By the time 10 am rolls around, I am ready for a donut break. Four o'clock, and I am ready for a martini and a nap. I am already shut down for the day. I can rally after dinner for a short time, but by the time my kids are rolling into bed, I am speaking in tongues as I try to read to them. My eyelids are heavy, my brain is non-functioning and I am done.
But catch me at 6 am, and I can rattle off multiplication tables and recite the Declaration of Independence. I am bright eyed and ready to conquer the world. It has always been like this for me. It's my biorythmic destiny.
Being a mom for the past 15 years has forced me to change my inner timetable dramatically. I've had to accommodate babies who fall asleep at 6:00 pm, and then believe that the 2 - 5 am time slot is the best time of day. I had to deal with the upside down and counterintuitive elementary school schedule, which has the day begin at 9 am or later, hours after a typical six-year-old has been up and ready to go. My high schooler, on the other hand, who could sleep until noon on a normal day, has timed it so that he must rise not one minute earlier or later than 6:28 am to make the 6:45 school bus.
I've had to deal with coming in late to work for years, and always having to leave by 5:00 pm because of child care. In my years as a consultant, I've had to manage balancing my client work in the meager six hours or so I have between the moment the bus leaves in the morning until its arrival way too soon in the afternoon. One meeting downtown, and for all intents and purposes, my day is over.
I have had to learn how to work late at night, because no matter how early I try to get up in the morning, someone inevitably gets up with me and needs something. Forget working out. My best exercise time coincides with my best work time – in the 6-7 am range. But I am so busy making sure my teen hears his blaring alarm at that time (and that it doesn't wake the others) that I almost never get out of the house to exercise in the morning anymore. I've experimented with other time slots, but I always feel like I am not doing something else (like working) when I try to get to the gym at 11 am.
So when it occurred to me that I might actually be able to call the shots and start to work when I most want to work, I was thrilled. Until my son wrapped his arms around me and made me realize that, despite being the third child, he will never allow himself to be an afterthought. He is extremely present, and always lets me know when he needs me.
And I still like being needed by my kids. The early morning email will have to wait until 9 am for another couple of years.
Photo by spierzchala via Flickr.
Ah I remember it well! Enjoy these fleeting days, Karen.
Posted by: Beth Joselow | Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 07:27 PM