Mommy is an editor, a proofreader too. She’s a perfectionist from her routine to the system of how she does things.

Her little boy is sound asleep for his afternoon nap, so she gets up from their bed and starts to work.

As usual, she sets up her laptop—wiped clean from the keyboard to the screen. She pushes the curtains aside, because she works best with soft sunshine flooding in and the view of the city seen on her desk. She boils water and makes a mug full of coffee to jolt her mind awake. She tied her hair up in a perfect, sleek bun, and puts on a pair of her reading glasses. She works at her neat, minimalistic home but she still makes it a point to look clean and flawless in her T-shirt and shorts.

Then, she sits on the soft swivel chair, opens the word file, and starts reading. Throughout the whole process she was serious, almost emotionless, robotic.

Her eyes are laser-focused on the laptop screen, intent on revising some lines. She’s typing inquiries in the insert-comment feature of the document and eliminating every mistake to make the manuscript spotless.

Mommy is oblivious that a pair of small feet are already thudding softly on the wooden-finished floor. They hurry past the open door of the mother’s home office and go to the kitchen. A soft, cold bluish-white light touches the small feet before darkness took over once more.

And just when Mommy took a second of work break to massage her neck, a pack of Hershey’s chocolate bar slowly rises from the edge of the desk. It is followed by a hand that pulled up a cute little boy who peeks from the edge of the desk and smiles while waving the chocolate bar.

Mommy is used to getting her work done at this hour, uninterrupted, but this time, she breaks free from her perfectionist, always-in-control self. With a serious face, she saves the word file, and closes its tab before turning her swivel chair, so that the little boy can climb on her lap.

“Mommy!” he exclaims in a small voice. And as if on cue, her working woman mode is turned off. Her best version, the mommy mode, is on.

When the chocolate bar is unwrapped, she isn’t the serious, poker-faced editor anymore. She smiles.

They took turns in biting the chocolate bar, tickling each other too. Now her hair is a mess, her shirt is wrinkled, her reading glasses are crooked, and her deadline is waving. When Mommy slowly takes off her reading glasses, she sees in her child’s sparkling eyes that her teeth are stained with chocolate. Her perfectionist self wants to correct that by wiping off the chocolate, but knowing that it makes her child smile, she keeps her teeth chocolate-stained to just taste this moment with her son. She smiles wider and the little boy chuckles louder.