MY BOSS,MY REFUGE,MY CHILD

TODAY • Friday • December 8, 2006
IF ANYONE had told
me that once I had
children, I would be
a stay-at-home mum,
I would have extended
the seven
years I waited to
have my daughter.
I was one of
those women who
liked the symbolic concept of children, the
motif of procreation and the hope of the
future — but not actual babies.
As a teenager, I devoured book after
book of developmental psychology my
mother had on child-rearing, even as she
was using them to raise me. Those were
my first lessons on detachment, thinking,
in the midst of an adolescent crisis:
“I see what you are doing ... you’re using
Chapter 9 out of Dr James Dobson’s The
Strong-Willed Child.”
I figured I would do the same when
I actually became a parent — that if things
got too much for me to handle, I would
go to the “happy place” in my head and
get some perspective.
But I couldn’t. Not as a stay-at-home
mum. You can’t leave. There is no “happy
place” to go to. You can’t even take a day off.
I remember in the early months (and
even now) daydreaming of a large empty
house with a single, down-filled pillow, and
just laying my head down and sleeping.
I once overheard a co-worker, who
had just had a new baby, say: “I really
needed a vacation so I came back to work.”
I think the biggest thing I missed
when I stayed home was the community
of those who were honest enough to really
talk about how bad things got on some
days. People at work did. We whined together.
It made the day go by.
But with mums, it was almost like we
were hanging onto such a fragile thread of
sanity, and if one mum admitted to another
how tough the going was, that thread
would snap.
I remember pulling up by the side of the
road in tears, chiding myself for “not being
able to do this”. I was intelligent, well-read,
well-degree-ed, apparently well-resume-ed,
so why the heck couldn’t I “do this”?
So, well, why do I continue to do it?
Why don’t I, as my husband nonchalantly
suggests on my bad days, “just go back
to work”?
Because I’d hated many of the jobs
I’d worked at and didn’t quit. Because I’d
sold my time, sleep, energy and mental
health for the highest bidder among the Fortune
500 companies. Because I’d endured
crazy bosses and still showed up for work
day after day. Because the Singaporean in
me had been schooled to believe that jobs
are not there to love, but to survive.
I’m at home because, finally, for the
first time, I’ve got a job that matters. And
if I had sold my soul, sleep and sanity for
cold hard cash, why wouldn’t I do the
same for two human beings who loved
me even before I’d proven myself qualified
to be a mum?
I’ve finally found a “boss” who thinks
I am irreplaceable, who won’t lay me off
and is irrefutably invested in my ideas. And
while at the end of the day, I am as exhausted
or more exhausted than I ever
was, never once back then did I say, “I’d
wake up and do it this all over again”.
Trust me, I’ve tried to go back to
work. I even got very expensive full-time
help, I got the household ready, I got the
kids to sleep through the night.
But as I faced 60-hour workweeks,
bosses and team members, people who
wanted all of me, I realised to my horror
that a lot more had changed about me
than that four-inch scar on my bikini line.
I am not the sharp-edged, cutthroat
negotiator I used to be. For the first time
in my life, I value my time. I have to REALLY
like my job, because every hour I am at
it, I am not in my children’s lives.
For a while, I was really angry at my
children for putting me in this bind. I was
outraged that my husband got to resume
working like nothing had changed.
It has taken me this long to thank
them, these little creators whom I once
viewed as my captors day after day; whose
lifestyles, sleep schedule, conversation
pattern interrupt
my life a million times a day.
I’ve learnt to appreciate
them for taking me out of
the rat-race of work and forcing
me to value myself in a
way I could never do by myself.
They make me value my
wholeness, my sleep, my mental
health, because now their well-being is
at stake.
“What makes you happy, mum, what
makes you smile?” my four-year-old asked
me recently.
“You know, sweetie,” I say, wracking
my brain, “mum doesn’t really smile ...
smiling is not one of my daily goals.”
I am embarrassed that, once again, a
child has put his or her finger on something
10 years of therapy failed to do.
They are the wisest teachers — the
children. And that’s why I stay home.
The writer is a Singaporean
stay-at-home mum based in Palo Alto.