Month: June 2015

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How Working Retail Prepared Me for Motherhood

Processed with VSCO with a9 presetI started working in high school because I wanted to make a little extra cash. Since the only places that tend to hire high school students are places like retail stores or restaurants that treat their employees like….well, like dysfunctional high school students, that’s where I got my start. Unfortunately, I got stuck working these jobs far longer than I would have liked. While trying to find a career, and then trying to justify working the many part time jobs and unpaid internships that were necessary to start a career, I worked for a well-known coffee corporation (including a drive-thru store), a clothing store, a recognizably magical store represented by a popular rodent, and a hippie-style establishment.

Maybe it was the unintelligible screaming. Maybe it was the unbelievable physical exhaustion that made sitting down to use the bathroom feel like relaxing in a hot tub. Maybe it was the sight of my bank account. But something about those early weeks of motherhood suddenly brought back numerous repressed memories, and also some valuable lessons I had learned that helped me to survive.

  • The customer is always annoyed. Baby is fed and burped, the diaper is changed, has napped within recent memory…and yet he or she is crying. It’s very similar to that customer in the drive thru who insisted you make her triple grande extra foam extra hot latte with half an Equal about three times every afternoon because she could tell when there was not enough foam or three-quarters of an Equal (I wish I could say this customer was an invention of my imagination, but no. She is very real.) But, like said customer, you have to just keep trying, with as much patience and cheer as you can muster, because they sense frustration like a shark sensing blood. And sometimes you run out of patience and have to get someone else to try for a while, or step away and take a few deep breaths, and that’s okay. Eventually, this will pass, and there will be another problem instead.
  • The hours are horrible. Retail workers sometimes never see daylight. They might work from 3 am to 5 pm (especially on Black Friday). Being a new parent is the same. Between late night feedings that continue through the day and into the next night, it’s easy to forget what the sun looks like. Or what sleep feels like.
  • Everything needs to be washed. That adorable stuffed animal was not born into a glass case and kept there, safe and pristine, until you or someone else decided it belonged in the arms of your child. No. That stuffed animal has been tossed about in a cardboard box, thrown on the floor, slobbered on by an excited toddler who escaped his mother’s gaze for a minute, tucked under a dusty shelf and forgotten until closing, and used to cover an iced tea stain. Like pretty much everything else that is purchased from a store, it really should be washed before it inevitably ends up in your child’s mouth.
  • Never force your child to meet Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I was never a fan of this anyway, but having worked in a mall, I’m even more reluctant. If my child begs me for the chance to sit on Santa’s lap, then of course I’ll oblige. But I won’t take her against her will. Sure, there’s a chance the man impersonating Santa is a decent, hardworking man just trying to earn a few extra bucks to spoil his kids for the holidays. There’s also a chance he’s a questionable character who was just hitting on a sixteen-year-old girl in the hidden alleys of the mall. If that’s the case, maybe my screaming child just has a good sense of stranger danger. I’m not going to encourage going against it.
  • You eat when it’s convenient, not when you’re hungry. It’s normal for retail workers to have either lunch or dinner at around 3 P.M. It depends on the schedule. With a newborn, the same thing kind of happens. Between feeding the baby, changing the baby, changing the baby again, calming the baby, and entertaining the baby, sometimes you don’t get a chance to eat until you’re almost not hungry anymore. And even then eating might involve sitting on an exercise ball with the baby in one hand and food in the other while bouncing up and down to calm her. (True story)
  • People like to tell you how to do your job. Even if they have no idea what it’s like to have your job. Even if they have no idea what’s going on in the background. People will tell you your baby is crying because she’s hungry even though she just ate, or that she must be cold when it’s 85 degrees. People will tell you to go look for something in the back room even though there’s nothing in the back room but a mop bucket and what looks like the remains of someone’s lunch. It’s annoying, but best not to dwell on such remarks..
  • You will get dirty. I used to come home from work in all kinds of colors. I’ve worn green matcha and hot fudge and just general grossness that I would rather repress. Motherhood is similar. Sometimes there’s not much to do except calmly change the poop-covered baby before changing your poop-covered self, and gag at the memory later. In this case, sleep deprivation comes in handy. When you have to either laugh or cry, try to laugh…and then try to stop before your husband thinks you’ve officially gone insane.
  • You can’t have nice things. See above. Unless you want that expensive new dress to be drizzled in bodily fluids, wait until your child is at least a teenager to buy new things. Maybe then you can start dressing like them to make up for lost time (those women who dress like their daughters make sense now).
  • Nighttime is for stocking. People seem to think that retail and restaurant workers hang around after close solely for them. (Example: Asking a person mopping the floors at 12:30 a.m., “Are you still open?” because clearly they’re not desperate to go home.) Contrary to popular belief, workers hang around in order to clean and stock in preparation for the next day. The hour or two after bedtime is very much the same. I stock the changing table, wash the play mat and anything else that has been destroyed throughout the day, wash bottles and pacifiers, and do what I can to prepare myself for the next day.
  • The paycheck…. After a week or two of suffering in this manner, I used to receive my paychecks and generally feel slightly cheated. Motherhood pays even less…and at the same time, it pays even more. I may not be getting a “wife bonus” worthy of filling my closet with designer clothes anytime soon, but the first time my little girl smiled at me at 4 a.m. after I had to change her soiled onesie…I felt like it was an even trade. `
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The Way You Look Tonight

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Once in awhile we have the opportunity to consciously make a memory. This is rare, but it does happen. When it does, I try my best not to let it pass.

My grandmother always loved babies. I think that’s why she had nine of them. But obviously time passes, and the babies inevitably grew up. They had their own babies, and she was happy again for awhile. Then those babies grew up, too.

When the time came for them to start having babies, she was growing old.

When my daughter was born, my frail little grandmother ventured out in 20 degree weather to see her at the hospital. She came in with her walker, guided by my aunt, and sat down in a chair. We handed her my daughter and for the next hour I don’t think her eyes ever left her face. Maybe once, to comment on how beautiful the baby was. But that was all.

Later that night, as I was rocking my newborn to sleep while my husband ran out to get food, I sang “The Way You Look Tonight”, crying as I did so. I was overwhelmed with love, and the first song that came into my head was a Frank Sinatra song I had first heard from my grandmother. Already it seemed a torch had been passed.

Two months later, my grandmother was the one in the hospital. It wasn’t the first time, of course. But it would be the last.

Even when we knew it was the end, my family brought her home. She wanted to be home. When she could do little more than sleep, she wanted to be in her own bed surrounded by the people she loved.

By this point I felt comfortable bringing my baby out and about. I brought her to see my grandmother as often as I could. Even at her weakest, my grandmother always lit up when she saw her. Sometimes she even tried to play with her. It probably took up all her energy, but it made her happy. And my baby would always smile.

One day, for just a little while, it was just the three of us. My grandmother was resting in her chair, her eyes on the baby in my arms. And since my daughter was cranky, I tried to make them both happy. I put on a Frank Sinatra station on Pandora and began to sway with her in my arms.

The first song that came on, of course, was “The Way You Look Tonight”.

And as I sang along and watched my baby calm down and close her eyes while my grandmother nodded along with a small smile, I knew this was a memory.

By the end of the song they had both drifted into a peaceful sleep, and I sat there wide awake and aware that if what I had learned in school was true, I was between two people so close to heaven, but in opposite directions. And even though there were three of us in that room, the memory would only last for me.