Aisles
On Tuesday I took a long lunch break and went to the grocery store. There was an echo in our fridge that rivalled the Grand Canyon’s, and my family The Clampetts (they even call themselves that) arrive tonight, so we definitely needed to do some stocking up.
Work has been crazy busy, I’ve been putting in long hours and working under the very flickering edge of the whip, getting things done just past the glancing edge of the sting. In our industry the looming recession has us all locked down – not just our company but all of the companies across this line of business suffered badly during the telecom crash after 2001. Companies are cinching their belts, chopping all expenses, and like everyone else I know in all the companies I work with, we are on travel bans. So working from home has become encased in steel and covered with iron bars with the odd bit of hardtack thrown in to keep the masses quiet. This is ok, really. My teams are located all over the UK, we work just as well at home as we do trying to get face to face.
In the grocery store I find my head isn’t where it should be. I find it hard to concentrate, I find it impossible to get through each aisle without having to backtrack again. My thoughts leap all over the place – cottage cheese, brown sugar, need to re-submit lines of IP code again, Coleman’s mustard, I love seeing my babies light up when I walk into the room, shaving gel. I turn a corner past a display of Walker’s Crisps – 2 for 1 don’t you know – and see two businessmen in pin-striped suits and ties, two identical plastic containers holding their rapidly cooling quickie lunches. They talk and laugh and walk with an air of hurry and of self-importance – they can grab a lunch but their work cannot bear their absence, it will start to rattle the yellow wallpaper without them.
I used to walk like that. I used to be like that. I was them, once. The beautiful clothing of my working world, the high heels, the stockings, they all lie in wait in my closet, wondering why I’ve left them.
I got an email a few days ago from someone I used to know years ago. We worked on a bid together, back in the days when he and I were single, when my skirts were shorter and my makeup perfect and my face unlined and my heels sky-high. We also slept together once, as you did then when the only responsibility you had was to a deadline and the next glass of wine. He simply wrote to say hi, and I said hi back. Angus knows about the email, as he knows about that chap and I sleeping together years ago. We operate on what we call glasnost in this house, and before I even moved in we went though The Lists, the ones where we’d written down names, dates, and whatever details were worth mentioning. It was nice hearing from this man from the past, he’s still in an account team and married with kids. We swap stories of where have we been, what’s happening with so-and-so, stories of home renovations and children. We don’t mention the drunken sexcapade, it perhaps doesn’t need mentioning. I don’t tell him that the body he once had his hands on is now down to a size 6, albeit a size 6 with a C-section scar and a loose stretch of skin that doesn’t go away. He doesn’t tell me if or when he’s ever thought about what we did that night and what his memories tell him about it.
I see those businessmen in the shop and remember what it was like to be that person, to be so self-important, to be thinking of where my passport was andwhich airport to get to next and what frequent flier lounge I would use and what presentation I had to line up. I always knew what the levels of the unguents in my toiletry bag were at and I always packed various clothing in monochromatic shades, just to be sure to match. These days I don’t even know where my toiletry bag is let alone what’s in it, and my days are spent on the couch, laptop armed at 20 paces, dressed in house pants and a T-shirt.
I think very swiftly and suddenly that I can be more than I am now, that there must be more than there is today, that this alone cannot be where it stops.
The thought subsides as soon as I pass a display of Rice Krispies and I am me in my jeans buying food for the family, and will head home to babies and housework and a man who loves me (in spite of? Because of? Regardless of? Thankfully for?) and my body, a job that is just a job and a face that gets more lines on it in the mirror every time I turn around.
By the time I pass the strawberries, I have forgotten that I felt I could be more than I ever was.
-H.
glasnost – hadn’t heard that term since current history class well over 20 years ago! but you have named your dog gorby ….
i so understand that feeling you describe when work quitted me 11 years ago. now i’ve made my lifestyle fit in with my demands … who am i kidding? they’re the demands of lil boys and man/children
Remember that those self-importsant business guys can be bought low by a glitch in the markets that is not of their doing – but you will always now be a mother and a vital part of your family. A bit of business-class travel is nice, but I hate being away from home, and the long jet-lagged hours socialising in broken Engrish and the extra stuff you end up trying to pack in to too short a time (and the inevitable expenses inquest afterwards, and now all the ‘is your journey neccessary – we are sustainable, you know’ inquistion beforehand. Of course it’s neccessary, I’m not going to a sodding industrial estate in the outskirts of Major North American Conurbation for fun, I want to be at home in a comfy chair with my family, you twat)
I think that a look in your babies eyes will keep you centered on what’s really important. 13 years ago I had to pick between two jobs. One with not much money, lot’s of security and spare time. The other paid roughly 5 times more, but with less security, and very little time off.
Though the wallet is thin, when I look at my girlies I know I made the right choice.
I doubt if you could be more than you are now. Different, maybe, but more?
Where “they” are you have already been, but where you are now they might never arrive.
So screw “more”…
Lily
But you already ARE more than you were! What really has more meaning? Your smiling, happy, well-adjusted kids lighting up when you enter a room? Or the really big project implementation? Because, you know, I’ve been a part of quite a few implementations. And they felt good when they went right. But none of that tops being Mom.
This is exactly how I am feeling this week, too. RIGHT down to the email from the co-worker (and the short lived affair, 11 years ago)! Unreal. I am bored at home, but do I really need/want to work again or is this just a phase? I miss the buzz the wardrobe, the coffee breaks, the “life”… and yet, this is the life I have alwasy wanted. I don’t know know what is missing but something is.
Personally, I think you’re being more now than you ever were. What we do at work will be obsolete and probably useless in a short time (give or take a few years). What we do at home with our children will last years, decades, a life time, and possibly multiple generations. Now THAT is worth doing and doing well.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying give the company a half-hearted effort; but rather at the end of the day, I will be far more proud of and satisfied with what I’ve done with my children than what I’ve done with my job.
I think everyone who’s commented has said what I was thinking. But also, you are twice what you were at a time when the industry is only half of what it was. Points to you. You multi-task and balance life with work already, then throw in renovations… just wow.
Everyone has said it better… you are so much more than you were. Yet? Treasure each and every wrinkle. You’ve earned them.
Before my kids were born, I only worked for about 2 years, at a job that was not a career, but just a job. But I could have written this, back then. I know just how those thought can come and then so quickly be gone – because you’re into more important things now!
I had to look up “unguents” on dictionary.com.
And we are more than our high heels, stockings, and well-used passports.
It’s a cliche, but moms are forever.
Have I told you lately how amazing you are?
You’re using a different yardstick to measure your life now, but I understand about that old one still in the corner, gathering dust.