Miranda Bickford is running late for work.
It’s Tuesday, and the 26-year-old mother has to suit up her 5-year-old daughter, Evelyn, in pink snow boots and a sweater for yet another day of a three-block trek over ice and snow to her office.
“I felt like a little pioneer with my daughter walking to work this morning,” Bickford said.
Bickford is the founder and president of EggDrop, a small business in Uptown Village. Every month, she and her employees pack subscription boxes of surprise toys — usually small toys with a mystery character or other trinket inside.
Bickford and her vice president, Lauren Edmonds, managed the company for two years out of Bickford’s basement, but the small company finally moved into its own space a month ago.
Then, the snow hit, and everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The garbage hasn’t been picked up, so there’s a mountain of packaging from their products growing in the small office. The heater is broken in their building, so two tiny space heaters run to keep the company’s five employees warm.
And, thanks to schools being closed for the past week, there’s a posse of employees’ children running around the office, huddling in sleeping bags, watching videos on their moms’ phones and occasionally disrupting conference calls with shouts and giggles.
“I like it,” said Edmonds’ oldest daughter, 6-year-old Mya, when asked if she likes coming to work with mom. “There’s toys in the room!”
Bickford’s story is a snapshot of the challenges of being a working mother. When she started the company, she did so with parents in mind. The young mother wanted to create a business where moms could bring their children to work during school vacations or during the in-between hours after schools closed and the work day ends.
Jan. 10, when the snow first started, the company happened to be interviewing a child care provider who could care for the six children who come in and out of the office.
She started working that day, Bickford said. “It’s just been chaos.”
The past week off from school has sent all routines for Bickford’s family out the window, she said. Putting Evelyn, a kindergartner at Hough Elementary School, to bed at 8:30 p.m. is not happening, she said. Waking up and getting dressed isn’t easy, either.
Bickford wanted to build a progressive company that would be friendly to moms, but the events of this past week have been trying, she said.
“This is a weird situation,” Bickford said. “It’s hard for moms to work. You don’t realize how much you rely on school.”
And both Bickford and Edmonds worry about the impact the week has had on their children. Vancouver Public Schools have been open only six days since Dec. 16, when the schools broke for winter break, not to mention the snow days before the break began.
“It’s not ideal for the kids, either,” Edmonds said. “They’re bored.”
A few minutes later, Edmonds’ 4-year-old, Penny, climbed into her lap while Edmonds tried to work. Evelyn and Mya, meanwhile, took photos of each other with a camera Bickford handed them.
Despite the frustration, Bickford knows being able to bring her children to work is a luxury. She feels for working moms who aren’t so lucky as to be able to take their children to work who have had to forgo work and potentially income to stay at home with their children.
“For me, at least, it puts me back in that place where you realize at the end of the day, you are a mom first,” Bickford said. “At the end of the day you are the caretaker. If you’re lucky like we are, you don’t suffer that as much.”
As of press time, Vancouver Public Schools had announced yet another delayed school day.
