Welcome to Mother’s Gonna Work it Out – a newsletter not just for mothers with children, but for everyone who cares for anyone. All previous posts are here.
I’ve started the year with a regular commute into the City of London. On these days, I’m a cog in a machine; flung from platform to platform, squashed into mostly-delayed trains, and propelled by shoves from blokes in expensive puffer jackets and precision haircuts down pavements not big enough to contain this level of ego.
Once upon a time I might have tried to keep up – but now, my response is to go even slower. Maddening, I’m sure, but I’m quite content with my new rhythm and aren’t about to have it tutted out of me.
It’s also my first five-day-a-week gig since having Dexter, and I’m finding the adjustment profound. I’ve been through every shade of emotion. I absolutely expected the guilt, and have grown used to its regular visits, but I was surprised by the exquisite sadness. When I was waiting for the train to take me into the office on my first day, a full moon still lingering in a morning-blue sky, I was suffocated by what felt like a bereavement.
At lunch I took a walk to clear my head, and ended up on a bench facing an office block I worked in almost 20 years ago. I ate my sandwich and gazed in at the window I used to gaze out of, contemplating how much has changed – not least the price of a sandwich. I definitely wasn’t gazing out the window all those years ago considering if I’d get home in time to wish Dexter goodnight.
Later that week, I had a very tearful nursery drop-off where they had to prize Dexter off me. He’s not usually a clingy child, and the suggestion was that this was his response to not seeing as much of me. It felt like a deep dereliction of duty. However, on my way down to the station I bumped into a friend – and fellow paid-working mother – who gave me some excellent advice: ‘Focus on the quality of time, not the quantity of time you spend together.’
I’ve taken this deceptively simple maxim to heart, and it’s made a big difference. The moments Dexter and I have together feel a lot more cherished. If I’m getting him ready for childcare in the morning, we always make time for a dance around the kitchen rather than me stepping over him to clean up. I feel the full weight of him on my lap when I’m reading him a story. If I don’t see him all day, I’ll stroke his head for a bit while he sleeps.
In fact, it feels like we all need our heads stroked a little. It’s OK to be kind, and to accept kindness. It’s not a sign of weakness. As Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote in her column in the FT this weekend: ‘How can we rejig the metrics of success for all of us – whether individual leaders or entire economies – so that we can make room for care and wellbeing alongside ambition.’
These are two worlds that would do well to collide more often.