Wednesday, October 04, 2006

"Time not enough"

Phew! Finally finished my errands yesterday for the mid-autumn festival, dashing from place to place to buy mooncakes, pomelo, "piglet" biscuits....etc This is the life of a working mother, maximising the use of her "free time" (yeah cos doing these errands mean I will have to forgo my lunch :p) to complete her mission. This also applies to other missions e.g banking, marketing or simply shopping for something that I need etc

Since becoming a mother, I have treasured my lunchtime more than ever. Not that my lunchtime has increased from an hour to 2 hours. (Instead it has reduced from an hour to 45 mins!) But it means I need to accomplish more things with the same (or less) amount of time I have. Yes, time is precious for me because I hope to rush home immediatley after work to spend time with my girl. It can be a very simple chore like taking her for a walk at the void deck, changing her pajamas, running around in the house or saying a prayer with her before she sleeps etc. If I have to run my errands after work, I would have missed out some of the activities or worst still, I may not get a chance to talk to her as she could have fallen asleep by the time I reach home. That means I would have spent one less day in my lifetime with her. So sad huh? As a mother, you would feel that taking charge of the kids after work is necessary and feel guilty whenever you are not able to spend time with them. In my own definition, I feel that is how a responsible mother should behave. (No offence to other working mothers) Is that only myself feeling this way or that is generally the way working mothers feel? Actually I am considered lucky in the sense that my work does not demand me to work late everyday and most of the times, I am able to get off from work on time. However, even with that, I have only 2 miserable hours to spend with my girl everyday (reaches home around 7pm and she sleeps around 9pm).

Sometimes I really wonder how other busy working mothers coped with that little time with their kids and how I will be able to cope if I have another kid? I always feel that 24hrs is not enough for me cos I simply have too many things to do or want to do. I am already feeling that I dont have much time doing my routine tasks, not to mention doing my personal stuff. My wedding photos which I wanted to scan and put on the website is still left unscan. The malay language book borrowed from my SIL is still left on the shelf (I wanted to take up a third language when Trenyce was 1, now she's 2 already!) Oh, let me count when is the last time I have a simple meal with my galfriends...hmm

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi my dear sil. I do understand how you feel being a working mother who hope to spend more time with your precious daughter. As a mother there are a lot of sacrifices we need to make. As for me I sacrificed my career for my children in order to spend time with them. I was able to see Melvin's first step of crawling, walking..etc. But as for you since you are a working you have to sacrifice the amount of time you can have with your daughter.

It is basically our priority in life. Do we want to value our work more than our children? We can never have both. Although the world always portrayed working women who can have time with the family and being successful in their corporate life.

I would like to share a poem with you.

What surprised you about becoming a mother?

Myself
My temper and impatience
How tired I feel
How much I love my child
That a baby can take up my whole day
That while I love my children, sometimes I don't like them
How being a mother brings out the best and worst in me
Some things I said to my children that I vowed I'd never say
That I will never be able to use a bathroom alone again
How many times fingers need to be told not be put in the mouth
That a two-year-old can bring an adult to her knees in prayer faster than anything else
That I can't punch out at 5 o'clock or 10 o'clock or 2 o'clock
How much I started worryintg about germs and cigarette smoke and cars and strangers and...
That I truly understand my mother for the first time
That I could love a second child as much as my first
How wonderful it is to be called 'mummy'

Writing Again

Its been a long time since I blogged about my family life. My last entry was actually in 2010. Gosh, thats almost 14 years ago. Life's b...