IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:What's great about being at home is just being there, hovering like a perpetual lemon
THE KIDS are in the back of the car. One out of school, the other just finished playgroup. They haven’t had time to start fighting yet. The elder mentions that one of her friends is always picked up by her mum.
“Does that mean her parents are divorced or is her dad dead?” she asks.
“Because her dad doesn’t pick her up?”
“Yeah.”
“It could just mean her dad has a job and he’s not around during the day.”
“Oh right. You mean he’s never around during the day?”
“That’s right.”
I wonder, not for the first time, if my kids’ view of the world is skewed because they see too much of me. Both their parents now work from home so they have this impression that work is something one does around a child’s demands.
They realise that at times we need to be left alone, but recently they have taken to ascertaining if I am definitely engaged in a job-related phone call before storming into the room and demanding that they get to know whoever is on the other end of the line.
Fortunately, whoever is on the other end of the line is usually willing to tolerate their infractions but it doesn’t make for a professional atmosphere.
What started out as a definite choice to leave the workplace has morphed over the years into a conglomeration of job and home life, where one doesn’t end where the other starts. Rather, the two interweave constantly so neither I nor the people I am dealing with are ever quite sure if I’m working or not. These people include family, friends and colleagues.
Family is manageable. They see your stress levels rise occasionally and gain an insight into the machinations of your mind. As such, they will accommodate you in times of need.
They will accord you some freedom from demands to either entertain, feed or wipe them down when they see your angry work-head begin to rise more regularly than usual.
The downside of this is that they believe they can expect you to be available to them at a later date when the pressure has eased, ie regular work times. Work is seen as an irritant, a minor niggle that prevents them from having your full attention even at pre-designated working hours.
When you work from home colleagues and clients will be understanding, to a point. They will accept that you are a little behind schedule because you had to spend the day attending to a sick child. But they will expect you to stay up all night to catch up on that time.
Fair enough, you are probably on a flat rate and they have strict deadlines. They will sympathise with your dilemmas, but they want what they want at the agreed time. Sick kid or no.
You chose the “flexibility” of being self-employed. You know you are interchangeable with any number of other homeworkers with a broadband connection. You stay up all night.
Friends simply don’t believe that you do any actual paid work at home. They think you’ve found the golden goose. That you gambol around the house in a Brady Bunch idyll, with the kids winding behind you singing and dancing, while some sucker sends you regular payment.
They phone and tutt because they can hear the radio in the background. They presume you’ve just turned down the Bacchanalian orgy that is your daily home-working life for a moment to take their call. When you wind up working the occasional Sunday they give out to you for not being efficient during the week.
So, here’s the skinny. Being at home all the time is marvellous. Not usually for the reasons often put forward for home working. You don’t get to work your own hours – you have to work the hours that are there for you.
You may or may not be any happier or more satisfied with your career than you would be in an office or out on the road. But all that is by the way; if you’re lucky enough to be working at the moment, whether you like what you’re doing is down to personal choices you made some time in the past.
No, what’s great about being at home is just being there, hovering like a perpetual lemon, sometimes sweet, occasionally sour. It does mean you collect and deliver ad nauseum. It does mean you feed, clean and console when there may be more pressing matters at hand.
The thing is, you’re there, fortunate to be part of it all. And the chances are no other kid is ever going to wonder if you’re dead or divorced. At least for the time being.
