365 Nights (10 page)

OCTOBER

Work, Work, Work

I never dreamed I'd pencil in on my calendar a daily tryst with Brad: 2 P.M.—Conference call. 3 P.M.—Carpool to dance, pop by bank, and run in grocery store on the way home. 4 P.M.— Meet exterminator, check e-mail, pay a few bills online, and throw clothes in dryer. 5 P.M.—Start dinner, manage homework, sign permission slips, check e-mail, prep for PTA meeting, and locate missing cat, Merlin. 6:30 P.M.—leave for PTA meeting; from car call sitter about tomorrow's schedule, call mother, and call best friend in New Jersey. 8 P.M.—Nice little Gift with Brad. 9 P.M.—Fold clothes, wash face, brush teeth, read a few chapters of book for Book Club.

Prekids, Brad and I worked together at the same company, and it was all good. We could commiserate about the office, tag team on project deadlines and client demands, and swap gossip from the same watercooler. Our roles weren't all that different—we were both working spouses—and we had plenty of time for each other and for our schedule. But now that Brad is the full-time working dad of two, and I'm the part-time working mom of two who is also managing most of the house, our paths have diverged. And with this divergence of our schedules, our perspectives have changed, too. While we would both say our family is our priority, Brad's career has moved front and center as he is now the major breadwinner, and with the addition of our kids, our to-do list has quadrupled and our ideas about sharing new responsibilities were initially blown to bits.

Most marriages start out with having to make adjustments— the wife may be a morning person, and her husband may be a night owl, or the wife is fastidiously tidy, and her husband doesn't mind leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight. One may feel the need to unload a clean dishwasher right away and the other may simply pull out clean dishes on demand. These differences start as novelties, all part of the “to know you is to love you” process. But sometimes those differences can morph into “to know you is to wonder how it cannot
occur
to you to take out the garbage when it is overflowing banana peels and leaking a small puddle of nasty ooze onto the floor!” These are the things that can gnaw at a relationship. Throw a couple of Brand-New Human Lives into the mix, and you get a chronic, sweaty tug-of-war over power in marriage—who makes the decisions about the kids, money, sex—you name it. Let the fun begin.

Things were easier for my parents' generation. Dad had a successful career, and Mom did a great job raising us. (Look, Mom, I'm writing a book—yeah, it's about That Which Shall Remain Nameless.) He had his gig and she had hers—the boundaries and responsibilities were pretty clear. My mother handled everything at home, and my father worked on building a business. The fact that my mother was incredibly competent at most all things domestic was both a blessing and a curse for my father. She kept the house; she fixed electronics and small appliances; she sewed and mended (and in the seventies had a very unfortunate run-in with macramé); she landscaped and on occasion kept a garden. Mom tidied, organized, and rearranged; she killed snakes and fumigated hornets' nests, decorated on a budget and later without one . . . There was nothing in our house that my mother couldn't handle, couldn't figure out how to handle, or didn't know whom to call to handle. Oh yeah, and she raised my brother and me (and Dad did, too, of course, and was always present at all our landmark events).

When I was growing up, if my dad knew where the toolbox in our house was located, it would have been a surprise to me . . . and to my mother. Mom was not a wilting flower—both by design (she came from hardy stock) and demand (if she didn't know how to do it, fix it, or make it, it was not going to get done, fixed, or made). My mother would have made a killer executive or an electrical engineer . . . or as we've discovered of late, a budding artist. Instead she was one of a gazillion under-appreciated moms of her generation.

Who knows how it was to be inside the skin of their day-to -day lives, but from this vantage point, now they appear to be reaping the joys of all their hard work. I sigh with envy. Their life, and their relationship, is now one big vacation—or so it seems. Sure, they still have laundry to do and bills to pay (at least my mom does), but they go on nice vacations, they winter in Florida, play lots of golf, go to yoga (my dad likes to work on his core), get to spend as much time together as they please, and are still married and affectionate with each other after forty-five years. I sure can't wait for the day that Brad and I get there . . . on some days, though, I'm afraid we might die trying.

Despite the award-winning example set by my mother, she had to tackle only two roles: Wife and Mother. At first, I thought I could handle it. I even tried to be a superhero:
Wife! Mother! Star Employee!

I aspired to
Have It All.
Like most of my girlfriends, I believed that I could deliver on every goal and fulfill every need, on time, to every single person who needed something from me. After all, we were fabulously successful, twenty-first-century-type gals.

I remember exactly when I realized “Having It All” was really just “The Big Lie.” I had just recently returned to work after my maternity leave following the birth of my second child. I was racing home to meet the nanny. I was running late because I had misplaced my keys and I had to walk from the parking garage all the way back to my office, search my desk, the bathroom, the lobby and the elevator, and for kicks, our attractive male receptionist (just kidding). I was hiking back to the parking garage with my cell phone, and Brad on the line.

“Hey! Where are you? I need you to bring me a key to the Blazer.”

“Why, where are your keys?” he asked.

“How the heck do I know? I have turned this sixty-story office tower on its head and I cannot for the life of me find my blasted keys. I'm going to be late meeting the nanny and she's going to dock me like twenty-five bucks a minute if I'm late.”

The whole time I was talking to him, I was huffing through the atrium of said sixty-story, state-of-the-art office tower for the third time to my car. It is about an eleven-minute walk door-to-door. I had now done this
three times.

“Maybe they dropped near my car?” I reasoned, trying desperately to think what I could have done with those stupid keys. “I'll call you when I get to the car and let you know for sure.”

The keys were, in fact, there, but not under the car. What I had missed my other three trips to the car was that they were
in the ignition
. I had left them there that morning, as I came screeching into the garage on two wheels, already late for some inane meeting for which I was woefully unprepared because my oldest had been up all night with some weirdo cough that sounded like fingernails on the proverbial chalkboard. And while I was convinced my daughter would die that very night, she was fine and I alas was holding my eyelids open with pickup sticks the next day.

So not only were the keys in the ignition . . . but the car had been parked and
running all day long!
How was it possible that my car was still there and had enough gas to run all day? And why hadn't I noticed the fact that the car was running when I got out of the car, and returned to it twice looking for the keys?

That was when reality screamingly collided with fantasy.

I realized that I could not now, nor ever, have it all. I was shocked and embarrassed that I couldn't pull it off. But then I realized that it is virtually impossible for
anybody
to pull off—no matter how well educated, organized, prepared, and enthusiastic (when all else failed, I tried to play the enthusiasm card, but thinly veiled enthusiasm doesn't mask sheer contempt, I've found). Most women my age had been schooled that if you attend a good college, work hard, coordinate the right internships, and put in the hours, you will be rewarded with a good career, above-average pay, and opportunity for advancement. No one ever coached me on what to do when career and home are at such cross-purposes that you don't know whether you are coming or going. What do you do when you want it all—to be with your sweet baby and to continue on this career track for which you sacrificed so much before you got married and had said baby? Did I have to sacrifice one baby for another?

My boss was the poster mom for working women. Donning her short bob, Brooks Brothers suits, and seriously professional demeanor, she nearly resembled a man, which was the idea back in the early nineties, wasn't it? Logging sixty-hour weeks and juggling two kids and a husband, I was regaled with stories about how she put her kids to bed in their school clothes to cut down on prep time the next morning, or how she fed her kids frozen waffles on a stick in the car on the way to preschool. Before I had kids, I was mildly amused by her ingenuity. After I had kids, I was appalled. Surely,
I
could do better.

But it turned out that as much as I hustled, planned, crashed, juggled, hoped, dreamed, and gritted my teeth, I could not do better . . . and be happy and sane and good at anything. I was shocked. I was a polite feminist and wasn't this what the movement was all about—equal pay, equal opportunity, and most important, the guilt-free pleasure to pursue a career without judgment? I deserved and was entitled to the success that I had worked so hard and so long for. I was a vice president and officer in the company. There was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears invested in that business card I handed out at meetings. Not to work was unthinkable to me and certainly unthinkable to my husband, who was equally proud of my career achievements. And just as important, me not working was unthinkable to our budget. But at the same time, walking out the door every morning and leaving my Mary Poppins of a nanny to delight in my sweet babies every day . . . well, that was unthinkable, too.

There were no training books or seminars for this. Believe me: I checked. My own wonderful mom was of no help either.

Back in the sixties, she had quit her job when my brother and I were born, and that was the end of her brief foray in the working world. I know that there are plenty of moms, married and single, who don't have the luxury of a Mary Poppins, and drop off their kids at some marginal day care every day because that is what circumstances demand. I realized that I sounded bratty and immature as I whined and fretted over my dilemma, especially to my friends who had to work no matter how bad it got. And I'm sure I annoyed those who had decided to stay home (and of whom I was secretly, or not so secretly, jealous). On occasion, I was outright mean to them.

I hadn't prepared myself for this challenge and mourned the loss of this dream of having it all. I bitterly fought against the fact that there was a big lie. I felt betrayed and angry and confused and tired. In fact, I had never been more tired. This revelation was a shock to the system and it took me a few weeks and lots of wine to absorb it. And while I was especially sensitive to those who passed judgment on my decision to work, no one judged me more than myself.

Motherhood is a tricky business. And like all jobs, we each bring different skill sets to the table. So there are women out there who are better moms because they work. And there are moms who want to be at home, should be at home, and absolutely bask in the glow of all things maternal and sweet. And then there are the rest of us—struggling for the right answers, because what seems like the right answer one day only stands you on your head the next. And in the meantime, all these child-rearing experts are fighting over whether kids suffer in day care, suffer in the arms of a nanny, or suffer at home with a lazy mom.

And in some ways, that's what is underneath all this in-fighting among us girls. It's hard to own up to such a major confession—that despite us all wanting the same thing, we all want it in a different way. And since none of us really knows what we're doing in the beginning anyway, we plagiarize each other or our mothers or our grandmothers—that's human survival. We learn by doing and by watching others and by copying them. And no one, at least no one I know, likes to think they're making the wrong decision. So in order for me to be right, you have to be wrong . . . right?

But the bottom line for me was—did my kids suffer when I worked full-time? Absolutely not. But I will tell you what:
I
did. I suffered through work meetings wondering what Mary Poppins was feeding my baby for lunch. I avoided business travel as much as I could (certain that I would die in a fiery accident and Brad would have to explain to our daughter that Mom “chose” work over her). When I did have to travel, I resented every minute I was out of town, sure that my child would forget the sound of my voice. Client issues seemed so ridiculously banal that I had no tolerance for them. So at the end of a long, painfully exhausting day, soon after the incident of the running car in the garage, I decided to try a new approach. I ceded that I could not have it all, but that maybe, just maybe, with some careful planning and a lot of faith,
I could have a bit more of what I wanted.

Next came the hard work—figuring out what I wanted and how much I was willing to do and willing to sacrifice to get it. When I could answer that question, perhaps I could better master my destiny, and isn't that what we all want? So I sat down with Brad, and we hammered out a strategy where I would cut back on my hours (and pay). We took a financial hit for the sake of everybody's happiness (okay, mostly mine, but ever hear of the trickle-down theory?), and decided to forgo some necessities and luxuries that my full-time salary provided. I felt like a saner employee and a better mother. Was I a better wife? I'm not sure it even crossed my mind.