I’m off to a faculty meeting at Voss tomorrow, where all the heads of department and vice heads and pro-deans and contra-deans and office managers and whatever we all are are going to discuss things like reorganisation, success criteria for cross-disciplinary research collaboration and internationalisation. Unfortunately this involves being on a bus in the city at 8 am which in turn involves leaving home at 7.30 which I do realise is late by some peoples’ standards, but for me it means leaving home a whole hour before school starts. That means my daughter has to go to before school care, (morgen-SFO), which has happened all of twice before in her life and which had her in tears at bedtime this evening.

Of course children know from birth that mothers are suckers for tears from children who don’t want to be left at daycare of any kind. I just dropped my guard because she hasn’t done this for so long. Obviously she’ll be fine. She’s nine and a half. And she’ll spend the night with her loving (and beloved) grandmother (once she’s landed after her business meeting in another city). And I’ll be back Friday at 4 pm.

I still feel like an absolutely monstrous mother who is no doubt scarring her child for life. Oh dear. And the poor little darling…

6 thoughts on “motherhood is eternal guilt

  1. scott

    You monster! Running around with contra-deans and bringing your child to school early. What’s next? Homework before dessert?

  2. RS

    Hello. We are planning a blog-conference is Sweden this autumn for womenbloggers.
    Maybe norwegian bloggers could be interested of taking part in this?
    http://www.kulturbloggen.com/2006/03/d_kr_vi_tjejer_.html

  3. Elin

    Ha ha ha… you’re posting about separation guilt for your daughter and someone responds by asking for attendance to a conference…. is that contextual spam or what!

    I know how you feel! She’ll survive though. I wanted to be with my grandma ALL the time. I actually usually spent all my weekends with her, sleeping on her coach!

  4. RS

    I am sorry if my comment did look as spam, but I could not find any email in the blog, and I want to fint norwegian bloggers who can tell this to more. I think that Norwegian bloggers can be intreserted to take part in out Conference.

  5. Jill

    No no no, RS, you didn’t look like spam, I was just offline for a while – and I guess Elin’s right too, I’m really not much in the mood for travelling right now. But looks like a great initiative! Blogged it 🙂

  6. Gustav

    I know the feeling (it happens to fathers as well).

    But on the whole, I think that universities are really great workplaces for parents with small kids.

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