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| My son at three, helping me to wash and organize my clay stamps. He has never broken one. |
Imagine:
working as a server at a restaurant with a toddler tugging on your
apron as you presented the wine samples, sticking their fingers into
customers' desserts, needing to go potty just as you start to cash out
somebody's check.
Imagine:
working in an office with your child yelling, "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! I
GOTTA GO POTTY!" in the background while you're on the phone with a
business supplier or major customer. And finding dribbles of jam and
crayon drawings all over a vital contract.
These
scenarios are completely bizarre and horrible. They feature often in
movies and sitcoms because it's a parent's worst nightmare to have these
things going on while they are trying to maintain a mature and
professional demeanor at work.
I
live with this every day as I work from home. Whenever I sit down to
answer customer emails, my son is yanking at my arm begging me to get
off the computer. He pulls my office chair so that I will turn to look
at him instead of the computer, and ever since he turned four he has the
strength to physically pull my chair away from my desk with me in it.
When
I call my clay supplier or the company that sells slip molds, my kid is
in the background; my being on the phone doesn't deter him, all it does
is make the volume go up higher.
I've
come back to my desk once or twice to find that hours of work has been
squished and destroyed by curious and experimental little fingers.
Mind
you, my son is not a badly behaved child in general. He's intelligent,
curious, energetic, and extroverted. He loves people and he loves me,
and since I'm the one home with him he wants my attention 97% of the
time. Something about my focus being elsewhere flips a switch in his
head and makes him go nuts trying to get it back.
Of course (of course!) I don't arrange for child care, because I'm home.
The fact that I'm working and that my work takes at least the same
amount of focus as other jobs I had before I was a mother who ran a home
business does not register with me ... or with society. If I qualified
for state preschool, I would be ineligible working at home, because
child care is not perceived as a "need" if you are able to be at home
while you earn money.
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When my son was
seven months old I attempted to start my Etsy business for the first
time. I found that it was not possible for me to sit for hours and work
while also caring for a small baby, and my shop never made it off the
ground. My second try started when my son was nearly three, and since
then I have cobbled together a steady supplemental income out of dizzy
late night shipping episodes, weekend clay messes, and often guiltily
letting my son watch more than an hour a day of Netflix cartoons
(Educational! Educational! as a sop to my conscience).
The
other day I was working, feeling guilty, as usual, trying to tune out
Curious George, when suddenly I had a vision of my husband working in
his office, where he is project manager to an executive, with the Man in
the Yellow Hat teaching George a valuable lesson in the background. I
pictured him describing a business development project to his boss with
my loudly expressive son constantly posturing for attention. The picture
in my head was so funny that I laughed out loud ... but it was kind of
horrible at the same time because I often face a similar situation and
nobody questions that I should be able to do it. I've even been told
that I have it easy.
First I thought, "This is the hardest thing I've ever done."
Then I thought, "But raising my kid is the most important thing I've ever done."
And
finally I realized, "I'm not put upon. I'm not taken advantage of. I'm
the fortunate one. I do get the hardest stuff but I also get all the
best stuff."
In
the mornings, every single day, my son wakes up and crawls under the
covers with me to cuddle and talk about his dreams, and his thoughts,
and what he wants to do today. We play every morning for at least half
an hour before we do anything else. And I can take that time to play
Spider Fingers and Hungry Monsters with my kid because I make my own
schedule.
After
that, we race to see who can get dressed the fastest. It's a game to
keep him from running around for an hour wearing nothing but his left
sock, not a desperate attempt to be at work on time. We
go for a walk around the neighborhood and on the way back we pretend
that evil fighter jets are chasing us and we shriek and run and scare
the neighbor's Rottweiler out of his tiny mind.
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| One of my first projects on my own was to make a little set of slab-built sandwich plates stamped with animals and letters. He uses them at every meal. |
I
make breakfast while he often "helps" and we sit down to eat eggs and
toast, or oatmeal, or sometimes we have egg tacos which my son likes
with extra spicy salsa. Every day he saves the last bite for the
friendly cat from next door, who is "our" cat in the daytime because her
family is gone all day. After breakfast he plays with the cat, digs for
bugs, or works on his "construction" projects. And I can go to see what
he's doing and hug and kiss him anytime I want to even in the middle of
working because I'm home.
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| Sometimes I ask him, "What should I make today?" The answer is always different. But it's always some kind of animal with teeth or spikes. |
Around
noon some days we head out into my pottery studio where he has a set of
toys he only plays with there. Occasionally he will make clay snakes or
play on the wheel, and after a while he usually plays Angry Birds or
watches the Magic School Bus for awhile, often bringing me the tablet to
replay an exciting moment (usually featuring a scary animal with teeth
or spikes). If I worked in an office, it wouldn't be an option to have
my little boy play in the corner as I filed papers. Sometimes the
constant stops for snacks, potty, boo-boos and inspection of everything
he finds interesting is frustrating; but how much would I miss it if I
worked alone all the time in my silent and empty studio? And honestly,
how much did I hate every job I had that involved filing paperwork?
(Answer: a lot.)
His
presence in my life and in my work has also changed what I make and how
I make it. For one thing, I've discovered that I absolutely love making
special little things for children. For another, I don't have the
luxury of uninterrupted days to work so I carefully schedule any focused
work (like wheel throwing) to fit in the few hours of kid-free studio
time I have two nights a week when my husband takes care of bedtime.
Even then, I often sneak back in to read him a bedtime story if I'm not
too covered in clay.
Working
with my son may be a challenge, but my business would not exist if I
hadn't been searching for a way to make an income while staying home
with him. I would have kept my safe, stable job, and nobody would
be tugging on me right now, asking me to please help them find the
spider they lost in my bed.
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