It’s Yom Kippur, the New York Public Schools are closed so my kid is home. Even if there was school she would probably home today with a cold. So here I am with a sunny day, a kid with enough energy to play and I can’t call anyone for a playdate because she is germy. The Husband also has a cold and he looked pretty miserable as he got ready for work this morning. He was coughing as his cold moves to his chest from his head where it was yesterday, after making it’s first appearance in his throat on Saturday. But, he can’t stay home, there is a deadline.
For me it’s a day of playing catch-up as I realize how many things I have let slide after two three-day weekends of rehearsals with a week of production work sandwiched in between. My kid is missing the weekend family time and has made her point in a number of ways from the very clear “I don’t like it when you are always at rehearsal,” to end-of-the day meltdowns.
(Yesterday at the end of the rehearsal when we were talking about the upcoming techs which will be on weeknights in venue between 5:30 and 11:00 pm one of the other clowns spoke of her anxiety over childcare. She was awake in the middle of the night worrying about it. The time is hard because the start time is before the husbands are home so babysitters must be found, babysitters that will more than eat up the small payment we will receive for these performances. I didn’t perform in New York at all when My Kid was little. It was just too expensive. You have to pay cash up front not just for all the hours spent at auditions, rehearsals and performances, but also for all the time spent traveling to and from home and the studios and theaters. Where I live in Brooklyn there are daycare centers with waiting lists and a large network of live-out nannies that come to the home to watch the children of professionals during office hours. But, when the work is evenings and on weekends, childcare is covered by a patchwork of babysitters made up of artists, students, relatives and neighbors. Organizing enough coverage to meet work obligations can become overwhelming and that is the real reason that women with children drop out of the workforce. They really want to work and they enjoy it.
I overhead a couple of mothers at school the other day. One had just gone back to work and the other was asking how it was going. The response, “It’s so easy. I come home from work and the kids have already run around at the playground and the house is clean!”