Working Mom: Volume 1; Issue 2: Travel

A year is nearly gone, my negotiated hiatus from travel for working purposes after the birth of my baby is nearly over, and I am faced with the prospect of going to Blythe, California.



If it were Paris, Caracas, heck, even St. Louis, I may be a bit less depressed by the idea of leaving my nursing baby behind. But Blythe? As I once mentioned,, Blythe is in the suburbs of Hell. Maybe closer to the inner city of Hades. The only thing going for it is, ummm, well, there’s.... howabout....... Oh!..... no, frankly, I can’t think of a single thing going for it. The river in that area has a foul odor, the smell of cow dung overpowers the stench of the river, the stink of pesticides overpowers the putrid cow paddies, and you can’t quite wash off all that malodorous essence of Blythe because the water coming out of the pipes is orange. I’ve spent nights in Blythe where it didn’t go below 112 F. There’s one passable restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican grotto that only has my exiguous adoration because it’s a shade better than the Popeye’s off the highway. It might help if I liked chile rellino, but I don’t.

My dislike of Blythe goes way back to the early ‘90's, where I spent a goodly portion of a summer there while doing tortoise work. Really, I have a resume FILLED with intimate work on desert tortoises. I can also flip my tongue upside down, and sex immature rodents (oh, goodness, I wonder what kind of Google searches THAT phrase will get me?). I am a woman of many talents. I lived in flophouse motels that aren’t there anymore. At least now my company puts me in rooms with towels. The telling thing about my experiences in Blythe is that I learned to love Needles in comparison, which has little more going for it other than simply not being Blythe.



Compared to Blythe, Yuma, my other destination, is Nirvana.



At least Yuma has Chretin’s for good Mexican gnosh. The river is hidden away, partly because there isn’t much water in it anymore by the time it reaches the Mexican border, so the smell isn’t as obvious. The crops are more interesting, too. Not as much alfalfa, and more lettuce and peaches. And, you’ve just gotta respect (or fear, or both) a town whose high school students are Criminals.

Crops, not tortoises, are what now bring me to the river, what pay the bills, and what take me away from the beginning of this post - my nursing baby. Sorry, sniff! Blythe just brings out the emotions in me, and I sniff! have to let them out.***hooonk*** But emotional rhapsodies aside, the two callings have a place in my Mommy travels ennui. Field biology, my past life, is a Man’s world. Forget about Dianne Fossey and Jane Goodall - rubes, I tell you. Most field biologists are men, and the ones I worked with won’t let you forget that. Any womanly trait from not having the upper body strength to buck hay, to pregnancy, won’t be left uncommented on with disdain if they perceived you unable to do twice a man’s workload. Again, maybe it was just all the men I worked with, all those damned mountain-man Quayle-lovin' Texans (what the hell were they doing in conservation biology?), there could be some biology-type Y’s out there who aren’t so fearful of consent decrees and affirmative action. But, my experience has made me essentially deny my feminine needs and desires when it comes to work. Sadly, even over seven years since I’ve hung up my field monkey gear and gone office rat, that means Motherhood gets the short shrift too often.

I’ve worked up to my due dates, worked over my short maternity leaves, flown all day in helicopters while pregnant, gone to Blythe and Mexico while nine months pregnant, express milk in office bathroom stalls, work weekends and long hours while somehow simultaneously caring for a sick household including me, and do this stuff because I expect there to be whining from my coworkers if I don’t. For this trip coming up, I’ve volunteered to do both weeks in fabulous Yuma and glorious Blythe , when in reality I could bow out of one, as many of the men do. I still feel the need to prove that I can be a productive and dependable worker even if I am a woman. Or, perhaps, I try to be a productive and dependable man, even if I am a woman. I secretly hope they let me stay home, but bite my nails worrying that they may, then how would I make up for that bit of weakness.

It’s not that I am ashamed of being a woman, or ashamed of being a mother. Frankly, I like being a woman and don’t see the appeal to being a man, especially since men can’t be Mommies, a title and experience I love. As my five year old daughter said, when asking about penises, “I don’t want a penis. That has to be uncomfortable hanging between your legs.” I just haven’t gotten over either my own perceived sexual inequalities in the workplace, or actual gender biases in the office and field.

So, I travel away from home, away from a baby who still doesn’t sleep through the night, who cries when I don’t come home when she expects me to, nurses throughout the day, and can get Mommy-hungry enough to sometimes drive Daddy batty so he calls me to come home early to calm her down and give him some relief.

I travel because I have to. But I wonder if I travel because I just think I have to. What would happen if I said no? Forget that my performance rating is based in part on my travelling - other men I work with don’t travel nearly as much as I did before this latest hiatus. No other woman in my office, Mommy or no, travels as much as I do. I doubt I’ll dare to find out, though.

Damned he-man Texans. It’s all their fault.