Why I didn’t take a picnic blanket to the Botanical Gardens

Before my son was born I was a corporate girl, I worked long hours, I loved my job and I had a good life.  I was comfortable in my corporate gear, my 9am –  9pm days, my life of high rises and after work drinks.

When I eventually had a baby I was happy to leave North Sydney behind, the commute across the bridge every day, the long hours and the countless powerpoint presentations. I was delighted to be living a life of nappies and breastfeeding,  toddler antics and toys.  I loved being home with Little Pencil as he grew up.  Although  I did miss the after work drinks.

I was really fortunate when Little Pencil got a little older and I started to do some work from home.  I was able to work while he slept and at night when I should have been sleeping.  Then when he went to preschool I took on more work, more hours and more adult stimulation.

But I always worked from home.  I never HAD to get out of pyjamas (although the kindy teacher would have baulked at my Garfield pyjamas at drop off time).

On occasion I had a meeting out of the house, once or twice I even had to attend a conference and for a very short period of time I worked two days a week in a job share position in a real office where pyjamas were frowned upon.  But I wasn’t fulfilled in my work, I didn’t feel like I was working, I felt like I was a mother passing time.

But now I am working full time.  I go into the office three days  and I work from home two days a week.

Yesterday was a work at home day but I attended a seminar at the Art Gallery of NSW in the afternoon.
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I drove to the gallery and as I turned down the road with the Botanical Gardens on my left and the Harbour beyond that, past the Andrew Boyd Charlton pool and the Woolloomooloo wharf on the right I forgot for a minute who I was.

I made a mental check: did I have suntan lotion? Then I remembered that I wasn’t going to need to put suntan lotion on Little Pencil as he was at school and I certainly wasn’t going to need it myself in an air conditioned auditorium.  I panicked when I remembered that the picnic blanket was not in my boot, then I realised that the rest of the seminar attendees would probably move to have me arrested if I walked in and tried to spread a picnic blanket over their heads.

It was a strange feeling walking past the park without my Little Pencil, it was weird walking through the Gallery without Little Pencil’s small hand in mine. I felt like a traitor in the park with high heels and no child.  I felt like everybody at the seminar knew that I was just a mum without my child.

But they didn’t.

They never knew I had a high bounce hand ball,  a Nintendo Gameboy and a Kinder Surprise in my bag.  They never knew I was looking at the clock to see what Little Pencil was doing as I listened to the presentations.  They never knew that I was a mother – they just saw me as a woman at work, at a seminar at the Gallery.

My mother role and my career role briefly collided in the Gallery yesterday and I came out thinking how lucky I am to have the best of both worlds.