If I didn’t have to work
A poem about what I'd be doing, right now, if I didn't have to work.
My son is seven and currently not attending school. This poem is about what I’d do with him each day, if I didn’t have to work…
If I didn’t have to work
If I didn’t have to work, I would spend my days wandering the streets of London with my son.
We would buy iced buns and sit in a square, by a patch of green, pulling off little pieces to feed the pigeons but mostly eating them ourselves.
If I didn’t have to work, I would spend my days talking with my child: asking him questions and answering his.
We would visit galleries and museums, take sketchbooks and notepads, and do drawings and write poems when inspired.
If I didn’t have to work, I’d find all the best playgrounds and play in them, with my son, surrounded by other children.
We’d take a picnic lunch and stay out all day, playing and adventuring, stopping at midday for sandwiches and crisps.
If I didn’t have to work, I’d find a nature spot with a tyre to swing on and I’d push my son, and he would push me.
We’d find our own ways to swing and swirl and hang upside down, together but each on our own.
If I didn’t have to work, I’d go swimming in the lido with my son, teaching him to swim in a way that works for him.
We’d jump in and dive in and splash and roly-poly - and shiver and find towels and warm up.
If I didn’t have to work, I would probably miss working, because I love writing and I like earning my own money.
But I’d enjoy the time and space with my child.
Annie x
End note:
I’m lucky: I’m able to do many of the above things, fitting them around the edges of my career.
Or, perhaps, fitting my career around the edges of my three children’s quite varying needs.
I sometimes feel like I’m back at new motherhood, right now, though: learning to mother in new ways.
It’s beautiful and enlightening and tiring and frustrating (because of society, not my child). But the hardest thing is combining a career with very full motherhood.
And yet, it’s what I choose to do. And what I need to do. And so I’ll do it. And occasionally write poems about it. And occasionally share them on here.
Ax
I got very excited and said to my friend ‘I’ve just done this ladies course and we have messaged’!
I’m very fortunate that my work allows me to have the flexibility to do most things I want to do. And even though, strictly speaking, I don’t have to work, I choose to because I know if I didn’t, all my ideas and creativity would dry up and I would fester and stagnate which wouldn’t really be like living at all. Although I think if I truly didn’t need or want to work at all, I would spend all day in bookshops and libraries, learning cool stuff about all sorts of things and buying books that I could read at home in the garden or from a cosy sofa at home. A bit like the copy of ‘Shy’ that was peeking out at me on a shelf at Home Sense today!