There's a running joke in my office that my three-year-old should be added to the payroll. Why not? She's earned it.
Coming back from maternity leave, I had two choices — park my daughter in a daycare or take her with me. I chose both.
Two days a week, she spends her day with a friend's mother-in-law, at an in-home daycare where she is the center of attention. The other three days, she goes to work with Mom. I have work, but she has me.
If that sounds like I'm simplifying things greatly, I am. The system my husband and I painstakingly crafted as the days of my pregnancy wound down is nothing if not imperfect.
As a reporter, I spend my days on the road. In the morning, we may be on a farm, chatting up the farmer about milk prices. Late morning, we'll move on to the county government center for a sit-down with the head of real property services to hash out tax issues, and then it's on to a lunch meeting with the undersheriff on the big drug bust. The afternoon may be spent at home, writing or making phone calls. Then again, we may be off to meet with the local high school baseball star.
Wherever I go, she goes — almost without exception. Which means she's been on farms, municipal buildings and sports complexes since she was eight weeks old, snuggled in a carrier or strapped in a stroller.
Those who are parents unfailingly tell me how lucky I am, the older generations of parents remind me to cherish these days with my child in tow. The rest simply accept her as part of the package deal, and the hint of informality that she brings to a meeting generally puts people at ease. Subjects who would otherwise be stiff in front of a reporter and her notebook turn to watch my child scribbling in a coloring book or telling her dolly a story, and they let loose. As a mother, I can be trusted.
I have had my scares. A politician's secretary — who had offered to watch my daughter so we could talk about his impending campaign — got a phone call. Rather than ask me to grab my daughter, she thought she could handle both. My two-year-old took herself on a tour of the town hall . . . and nearly gave me a heart attack in the approximately three minutes until I heard her little voice chatting up the secretaries one flight up.
In exchange, she's had her thrills. The horse rides offered by the trail ride leader I've interviewed, the chance to drive a firetruck. When singer Gavin DeGraw came home to give the neediest kids from his elementary school new book bags just in time for the academic year to start, my three-year-old knew only that the other little girls in the room were nearly fainting when this man touched their hands and signed the backs of the their T-shirts. So she walked up to him and turned around, waiting earnestly for a grinning DeGraw to sign hers too. The photos of the two mugging for the camera (see photo below) will be good blackmail when she rebels in her teen years and starts blasting heavy metal from her bedroom — see, you were once just a sweet little girl who liked "that boy's music."