Pack it In

Like many working moms I struggle with balancing my professional and family obligations. I have a “big job” (trumpet sound)…one that some people might envy. This “big job” includes a schedule that I can usually manage, a decent paycheck, autonomy, etc. etc.

It also requires travel.

Ugh. Now some people think traveling for work is a perk. Maybe that is true when the traveling is sporadic or when you actually have time to get out and about and enjoy the sights and sounds. Recently, I spent two days on Coronado Island and spent exactly 45 minutes in my suit out by the pool. Not a swim suit. A business suit.

Yes, most of my travel includes the following “perks”:

1. Spending 10 hours in a hotel meeting room—usually with no windows (even on Coronado Island)
2. Ordering room service dinner with a grilled cheese sandwich and iced tea
3. Paying for a $25 a breakfast of eggs and toast that isn’t covered by my per diem rate
4. Working out in a stinky, under-resourced “gym” with fat businessmen whom I have to ignore by cranking up my iPod
5. Channel surfing (without TiVo) for hours across a ton of ESPN, CSPAN, and foreign language stations before settling on a $15 in-room movie (i.e. Twilight, Stepbrothers--again NOT covered by the per diem)
6. Struggling for eight hours to get my room temperature right only to remember that I can never sleep in a hotel anyway

Now, all of this is bad, but it doesn’t compare the dealing with the guilt and stress of leaving my kids and husband at home. I work to make the trips less painful. I lay out all of the girls clothes for the days I’ll be gone, I call home at least once a day and text Paul in the morning to see how the morning routine went, I try and pick up the house before I leave.

Despite all of this, though, sometimes it still falls apart.

And fall apart, it did on Monday. And by fall apart, I mean I sat crying in the airport while Ava sat at preschool with no one to pick her up. The instant I retrieved the voice mail from her school that she had been waiting for someone to pick her up for 30 minutes, I suddenly remember the text message I had gotten three weeks earlier letting me know that her after school daycare provider wasn’t going to be able to watch her on Monday. Paul was at a job interview, I was about to board a plane, and her classmate’s mother (who can usually help out in a pinch) was on her way out of town for a lunch date. Then my Blackberry froze and I couldn’t make a call. I took the stupid battery out over and over again and it just stayed frozen.

All I could do was cry.  And feel totally inadequate as a mother. Ava is my sensitive kid. I was never going to live this one down. I cried some more.

Luckily, the women next to me offered me her mobile phone. After a flurry of phone calls and back and forth, I got the issue resolved. Right before I boarded the flight, I talked to Ava on the phone. She was fine.

I was not.

Even after a women sitting near me patted me on the shoulder, smiled, and said “We were all rooting for you” and Phone Lady leaned over to me and said “You are a great mother…you had that whole situation solved in under 10 minutes.”

Sure…the longest 10 minutes of my life.