Credit | Shutterstock via SpeedKingz

Do you know who the mums of Day Care are? Well, I’m sure you do. But let me tell you more about them anyway. Let me better acquaint you with them. Let me help you take a sneak peek into their daily lives perhaps?

The Daycare Moms

We are the mums who, like most mums of the world, wake up much before anyone else at home does. With eyes half closed, we first walk to the kitchen and put the milk on the stove. Note that it’s not the bathroom we go to first. Nature’s call needs to wait in line for there are far more important things to do like boiling eggs or preparing the kid’s breakfast. We don’t have the luxury of time or the blissful morning cuppa. Well, at least not before everything that needs to be prepared is prepared and everything that needs to be packed is packed.

We move about like machines going from one stove to the other. Water, milk, eggs, tea. Breakfast and lunch, one after the other. Peeling, cutting, washing, preparing and packing. We are an assembly line in ourselves. All the activities in perfectly synchronised motion. If you disturb our equilibrium at this hour, be prepared for the worst. We don’t even have time to check our social media updates in the morning. Yes, that’s how busy we are.

There is no time to enjoy the early morning chirping of birds or dipping those biscuits in that warm cup of tea. Our tea needs to be reheated over and over again so much so that sometimes we don’t even bother making a cup for ourselves. What’s the point? We are on a clock from the moment we wake up for this is just the first round of the day.

With the first leg of the day done, we reach the daycare and drop off the kids to start the next phase. Shoulders slouched, we walk or take the cab to work. On reaching there, if time permits, we manage to have breakfast too before moving to our cubicles. Then starts the race for we need to finish our work in the mommy timeframe which is at least an hour or two less than the normal timeframe.

We are easily recognisable though. If you see a woman who looks like she is dragging herself to work then it’s probably one of us. We try our best to take care of ourselves too, be presentable in an acceptable fashion. But if given a chance, we would love to do everything in our sweats. Really. That’s how unforgiving our schedule is till we can finally go to bed at night which seems like zillion years away every day. Anyway.

Once work starts, there’s a constant reminder going off at the back of our minds telling us that we need to finish all the work in much less time than normal. It’s like an alarm clock going off in our mind every five minutes. Why? Because we need to pick up our kids. Can’t leave them stranded waiting for us, can we? All our schedules need to be made around the kids with no flexibility whatsoever. Sometimes it’s really trying.

You’ll find that most of us are always tensed. We are exhausted and sometimes lost wondering how the hell are we even going to finish our work at all? We go through the day without taking breaks because we can’t afford to take any. And I don’t need to tell you how that’s not a good thing at all.

The moment the clock strikes 5 or 6 in the evening we have to rush to the daycare. So come client call or important meetings, everything becomes secondary thereby making us secondary in the whole scheme of things. This is the tradeoff we accept because there are still miles to go before the day ends for us. Strange though I haven’t yet met a father from the daycare who is equally tired or running against time. Fair? I think not.

If you see us while we are rushing to pick our children to make it to the bus or cab in time, you’ll see a glimpse of our on-the-run lives. Rains worry us for we need to take those munchkins home without getting them wet. You’ll see all of us running to the daycare when the weather is gloomy because we need to beat the rain and get the cab. Sudden strikes worry us for how do we take them home safely. Sudden calls from the creche almost give us heart attacks even if it’s to inform about a homoeopathic doctor visit. We are always on the edge. Always. Sometimes we are so vulnerable that a simple look from a fellow mother is enough to open the floodgates.

We try our best to do everything. But sometimes we just give up. There is only so long that we can run against time. Not everyone understands us but that’s okay. You can’t possibly understand how much work we do unless you are in the same position doing the same thing. So, yes, it’s okay. Or, maybe not. But that doesn’t change what we do or feel.

Sometimes I wonder how we carry on day after day, every day. It must be the love for the children. Disappointed, dejected and often having had a harried time at work, we are happy to hug those little rascals whom we love so much. Our day ends only after they are fed and put to sleep. Everything else happens after that whether it is additional office work, dinner, rest or even a book.

So, we are the mothers from daycares. Do you happen to know one of our tribe?

***

Linking to #mg hosted by Mackenzie Glanville