Getting Real With Shadra Bruce
The guilt weighs on me sometimes…
I’m a good mom and I love my kids, but the economy has created a situation where I am the primary breadwinner. My husband does much of the homework help, all of the cooking, and the laundry. Oh, I try to do laundry, but the first load is often enough forgotten in the washing machine that Dave actually prefers it if I don’t help.
Dinner time used to be when I bonded with my mom. I would sit on a stool at the counter and watch her cook. The kids do that with Dave, not me. To be sure, it’s better for all of us. The food he prepares is delicious and nutritious. When I cook, we would most likely be ordering pizza after whatever I was preparing was rendered inedible with my talent.
But I still want my kids to know I care, that I am there for them, and that I want to know everything that has happened with their days – even when I’m worried about picking up a new contract or making a client happy. I’m lucky that I work from home, so I’m here, and that’s half the battle. At least they are no longer playing tug of war for my attention with my atrocious corporate boss.
Lately, we’ve been bonding a different way – a way that soothes my guilt and helps my kids understand how much I love them. We’ve been watching our family videos. We were pretty consumed with videotaping the kids, our family, and family events when the kids were younger, and we’ve had a blast going back in time to when the kids were babies and letting them see what life was like before they could remember.
It’s a fun way to connect and the kids get to see how much I’ve been involved in their lives, so that if I can’t take the time to work on spelling words, they understand.
