A day with him is always a better day than one without him.

credit: Luisa

Every year, at the beginning of September, tv and newspapers repeat night and day how desperate are parents in this period and how they look forward to sending their kids to school. Say what you want, but I find this a really sad message.

Before deciding to have a baby, we quit our permanent job contracts and started working remotely as freelancers. There’s much freedom this way, for sure, but there’s much more instability too. One month goes well, another one goes bad. At the end we generally earn a little bit less than before, but we are happier. We can live and raise our child, for example, instead of having to hand him to a babysitter. Lucky people – you may say at this point. Easy to say that – we can answer back.

Do you have any idea of what it means to manage your work while your child is in the same house? Or, more simply, do you have an idea of what it means to stay 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with your child without any break, even at your office (meaning that you see your son just 3 hours in the evening or – better – that is not you, for all day long, that feed him, change him, wash him, send him to sleep, play and talk to him, face his everyday screams, frustrations and tantrums.)

Yet, after saying all this, for me the day the school begin, it’s quite a sad day. It’s not the day when I scream “finally I’m free!”. Maybe I’m masochist, or just weird, but it’s the day when I think that I’m gonna miss him so much because, even If I know that at last I’m are gonna work better and peacefully and even do something for us, a day with him is always a better day than one without him.