Work Trip & Work Skip

work trip: view from my hotel room in Times Square / work skip: view from behind my laptop screen as I type this today, a sick day for Kyle

When I was growing up, my father travelled a lot for work. When he’d come home from big trips, he’d always bring my sister and I gifts. Sometimes it would be a little trinket he picked up at the airport, other times something more substantial or special. It didn’t matter, I always loved whatever he brought me. As a mom now, I am sure to always bring something home for my bambinos each and every time I go on a work trip. Just like when I was a kid, my kids sometimes get a little knick-knack, or sometimes something more. This past weekend I had to go to NYC for a conference. K, O, and M all know that NYC is not very far away, but a work trip is a work trip, and I was away from home (anything more than a day trip, i.e. any overnight no matter how long, qualifies as a work trip), so — as far as they’re concerned — I may as well have been on the other side of the planet. In their seven+ years of life, K & O have never once asked me to bring them anything specific home from a work trip (in fact they’ve never even acknowledged that I might bring them home something, and each and every time they act completely 100% over-the-moon-surprised that I brought them home a “work trip gift”). Meera, however, is apparently a different story.

A couple of days before this last work trip, Meera asked me directly, “Mommy, when you come home from your work trip, will you please bring me a horse with real hair?” At the age of 3 she has already caught on to the pattern (work trip = gift). I was kind of stunned that she asked (and was feeling — as usual — quite guilty about the impending time away from my babies), so in a moment of weakness I responded (probably too quickly) to her question: “Yes! Meera, when I come home I will bring you a horse with real hair!” (??!!! OMG! a “horse with real hair”??!). I spent the next couple of days trying to figure out exactly what she was envisioning/expecting. (She was able to communicate it very clearly to me.) And then I kept my fingers crossed that it existed to be bought in NYC (I was banking on the fact that pretty much anything that exists can/could be bought in NYC). Turned out that the (in)famous Times Square Toys R Us was right next door to the hotel where I stayed for the weekend. On Sunday morning, before heading home, I walked over there in search of the ‘horse with real hair.’ It was pretty easy to find. I also found two “light up light sabers” (a toy which Owen and Kyle have both been coveting for over a year now; a toy which I never in a million years would have thought I’d ever buy for any child of mine). I figured that if Meera was getting a ‘horse with real hair,’ I better bring something super cool for the boys (it didn’t help that standing there in that Toys R Us, surrounded by throngs of kids-with-their-families, missing my own, feeling enamored with my boys for them having never asked for any work-trip-gift ever in their entire lives, and feeling significant Mommy guilt for being at work on a Sunday morning, I had a moment of weakness as I thought about how AWESOME they’d think I was for bringing them that particular uber-cool gift; I mean, really, what gift could be cooler for a 7-year-old boy and his twin brother [the beauty of twins and light sabers is that they always have someone to battle with]).

Upon arriving home with those three gifts, there was a moment or two wherein I’m pretty sure that my bambinos thought I was pretty much the most awesome working mommy in the whole wide world. That wore off quickly (it couldn’t/shouldn’t last), but it was pretty great for awhile. And now we’ve settled back into our normal routine (only now we have a horse with real hair and two light up light sabers added into the mix). But I’m always and forever being humbly re-reminded that “normal routine,” for us, means constantly flying by the seats of our pants and never really knowing what is going to happen from one minute to the next. Today I’ve had to cancel everything I had planned as I’m home with Kyle, who’s home sick from school with a nasty head cold. Home sick for him = work skip for me. The work trip seems like ancient history as I sit on the couch with my Ky Ky, both of us still in our pajamas, with me catering to his every whim (he is a very needy sick patient; needing some part of his body to be in constant contact with some part of mine at all times; needing a constant flow of liquids and snacks provided by me; needing help with appropriate placement of Kleenex under his nose; needing every-two-second reminders to cover his nose when he sneezes; etc.). But the light saber on his lap today is a constant reminder to me of where I was three days ago. And a reminder that more than anything else I’ve learned from this mommy gig, I’ve learned this: being a mommy means being a constant Giver. Whether giving work-trip-gifts or giving home-sick-work-skips, it is just giving, giving, giving. And sometimes that feels draining. But sometimes that feels invigorating. And there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when or why what feels like what.