Glitter in the Conference Room
It’s Monday morning at the studio. The team Zoom is wrapping up, and Tarzan is in my camera view again. She nimbly climbs the cotton line that holds the rope hammock suspended behind me. She makes an attempt to hang upside down and fails. Back up again.
I spent the majority of 2019 designing our dream studio for my branding firm, DesignScout. Since its inception, I have shied away from embracing the obvious scouting theme, but with this, our gorgeous timber loft space emanating the rich scent of fresh cut wood, I’ve finally succumb to the theme of “Camp Chic.” Vintage Girl Scouting ephemera dots the studio, Pendelton blanket pillows and sheepskins complement the designer hanging egg chairs. A hammock hangs in front of our 40' hand painted paint-by-number inspired scouting scene. It is our creative Aruanda.
Moving into our loft felt like the final merit badge in over 15 years of growing my studio. I had mindfully recruited my dream team of all-woman designers, cultivated a culture of respect and support, a work-life balance that my troop could be proud of, and a growing roster of clients and accolades. This is was our forever home.
And then came Covid. I had taken a glorious road trip up the 101 with my husband for his 40th birthday. Five days in a convertible driving through Big Sur. We knew that things could escalate, but I had no idea what I was coming home to. Hand washing instructions had been taped over the studio sink (complete with lyrics to a death medal song). Various team members had opted to work from home due to sniffles or recent travel. Less than a week after my return from California, my studio was completely empty. Lockdown was upon Chicago.
The next 6 months are a blur of navigating managing my team from my kitchen table and simultaneously solo parenting both my 6 year old and toddler. (My supportive husband is a psychologist and it was quickly apparent that HIPPA laws would bar even the slightest interruption of his work day.) I would like to say that it was easy, after all, I was buoyed by my incredibly supportive team, but those months in the economic Upside Down were some of the most terrifying in my life. Coping with virus panic, lockdown, aging parents, 24/7 parenting sans childcare, remote learning, and a 40% revenue loss all at one time. This was hard.
But not impossible.
As a woman who founded my company in a fit of defiance at 23, I am a life long figure-it-outer. Even on the most painful days — telling my team we didn’t have the billable hours to work full time, instituting furloughs — did I for a moment imagine an alternate future where I didn’t lead DesignScout. We would recover.
By September, Chicago Public Schools had some semblance of a remote learning plan. And with my son returning to daycare, it was decided that my daughter and I would spend our work and school days at the studio. The first few days were a tangled mix of joy and sorrow. I was back. That unforgettable scent of fresh lumber permeated the air. But before me seven empty desks sat preserved in time: Notes from a meeting, letterpress samples mid-review, swatches pulled.
Haunting visions the “before times” flickered through my mind: My troop marching down the street in matching bomber jackets on our Thursday morning coffee run. Short stories recounted half way to the water cooler. Someone executing the traditional, ridiculous bolt around the studio (fists raised), to celebrate an achievement. My heart ached.
The first day of remote learning, my daughter walked away from her desk with her headphones on, laptop crashing to the floor, no less than three times. I pitched clients as she flitted through the studio, executing moves for her dance teacher on the other side of the screen. I sat on Zooms wagging my finger emphatically just off camera in a futile attempt to look stoic as she mouthed requests for snacks.
Just, as across the globe, nature was slowly retaking the locked down cities with howler monkeys on the prowl and landscaping going unchecked, childhood swept over my studio.
Little hands pilfered the office supplies in every desk drawer, highlighters became markers, Post-It Notes art supplies. What once was decor was now costume. The timber beam now a mountain to scale with a hanging rope. And our designer egg chairs now spinning machines. For every fort built with binder clips and photo studio sweeps my corporate headquarters grew wild with play and imagination. We went feral.
Some of my most cherished childhood memories are at K-Mart. My father and mother met in the 70s while working there and he continued on through his retirement as a manager. Early Easter mornings were spent careening through the empty aisles of the store in un-purchased roller blades as my dad changed over a display. Or slowly navigating around on an electric wheelchair. As I grew older, afternoons were spent sipping Icees and chatting with my teenage friends (100% of whom he had hired) while they straightened in the toy department, my dad passing through scolding them with a twinkle in his eye. I am still haunted by the indescribable embarrassment of my father paging me from the service desk by name. But it was those moments: seeing the respect he fostered in his staff, the kindness with which he managed, and his limitless work ethic, that molded me.
These childhood experiences led me to crave the same for my children. And, without the pandemic, I honestly don’t believe I ever would have slowed down enough to allow my daughter to experience me at work. In the early days of Covid, when the restaurants closed or mothballed, and our revenue dropped, she watched as I began to unwind the tangle of figuring it out. She watched as I took the leap into forming a new division of our company and venture into entirely new markets. She watched as I reassured my team, pitched new clients, saved my business. And to this day, she spends nearly every day at my side as we have settled into our New, New Normal.
As vaccines begin to be distributed and the next chapter of Covid begins, I find myself struggling to imagine my team returning to the studio and no longer having her by my side. I smart a little at the thought of not seeing her practicing the splits or squealing on our rope swing. I will deeply, deeply miss this moment in time.
This time together will forever change the way I blend family and work. Perhaps, this global experience of parents dealing with parenting and working at the same time may change society’s very concept of work-life balance for the better. Scholars in the future will surely study how pandemic parenting will change the world, and I would love to think about that. But right now, I need to go scrub the glitter glue off of the conference table.
Scout Driscoll is the founder and CEO of DesignScout, A Branding Agency and VINT Wine Branding and Design. She lives in Chicago with her husband Mark and two persistently present children.
