Mama Magnet

We've all experienced the "baby magnet" syndrome, right? I felt it today as I walked into the office my department shares with history. A clutch of historians was in the hallway--two women holding children, another man and woman standing around admiring. The two kids belonged to one of the women--she has a toddler boy and baby girl. I felt drawn in as I joined the clutch--none of us said anything of any importance, we just stood around and looked at the babies.

Lately I feel like a magnet myself. The reason I came into the office today, in fact, is because I couldn't work at home. I went down to the basement this morning before anyone else was up,trying to send an important email that I'd been mulling over while doing yoga. I hadn't been down there a minute before Mariah joined me, saying she wanted to do some cleanup in her part of the basement. Then, mysteriously, Nick was there, too, offering "help."

I couldn't concentrate. Finally I said to Nick, "see this carpet?" (The desk is on a small patch of carpet, marking off an area less than eight feet square.) "This is my office. Pretend there are walls around the carpet and you can't come in without permission." From upstairs I heard Mark call Nick to him. Gratefully I turned back to the computer and tried to finish my email.

This happens all the time when I work in the basement. It was bad when the computer was in the back hallway, right by the kitchen, because I was in the thick of everything. Everyone always had to walk by. I thought it was because of the location, but now I find it's because I'm a magnet. Last Wednesday Nick had a friend over and I went down to work in the basement while they played upstairs. Sure enough, they were inexorably drawn to me. They came down to the basement in full battle gear (plastic armor, plastic swords, random sticks). They found the "Bop Buddy," an ill-advised gift to Nick that is part punching bag, part Don Rickles-style insult-generator. "That the best you got?" he taunts as the boys hit him. Harder and harder they hit as the Bop Buddy's screams and laughter grow ever more hysterical, mixing with the shrieks and grunts from the boys. I can't take it anymore and let them know. "I'm trying to work down here," I say as calmly as I can. "You boys need to take your game upstairs, or outside. You need to play somewhere else." They try to negotiate, to get me to move the Bop Buddy, but I refuse. (Now I'm sure Nick's friend will go back to his mother with the news that I'm so mean...but so be it.) It still takes them five minutes to disengage, and then only when I lead them back upstairs myself.

I tried moving into my bedroom to read for a while but their game inevitably spilled over from Nick's room into ours. Wherever I went, it seemed, they followed. I finally gave in to the inevitable and allowed them to turn on a video, the only entity in the house with greater powers of attraction than my own.

I know I'm lucky. I can do much of my work at home, and when I can't take it--and Mark can pick up the slack--I have a "real" office where I can go as well. But I'm tired of being a magnet. I wonder if babies get tired of it too?

(Read Lizbeth's blog entry on a similar subject here: Saturday, August 2, "The Mommy Tug-of-Wars")