My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life (17 page)

That “for better and for worse” part in the vows? It’s real.

Which doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of deep happiness and life-changing awesomeness. There is. But there’s a lot of crap, too. Even behind the white picket fence.

I’m a gig-mom, a hybrid of the working mom and the stay-at-home mom. My career has ramped down since I’ve had my kids, but I continue to do the occasional gig, appearance, lecture, magazine cover, training class, and fitness workshop.

Recently, I did a lecture and the group hosting it said they didn’t care what I said, so long as I didn’t get into the Mommy War mess. Even though they insisted that I remain authentic and honest and speak my mind, they didn’t want me to speak my mind about
that
.

It’s a hot-button issue because all of us, wherever and whoever we are, suspect we’re supposed to be doing something else. When life is particularly challenging, we feel this most strongly. When our kids seem too needy and we’re too broke to purchase new tires for the car and it feels as if we haven’t gotten out of our yoga pants in six months, and our marketing director sister-in-law, with skin that looks newly facialized and a handbag that costs a month’s mortgage, enthuses about her new project at work, we think we’re idiots for not having a quote unquote real job. Conversely, when we’re hammered at work and eating crap microwave burritos at our desk and we rush home to see our kids, who sob when the babysitter leaves, and we try to have some quote unquote quality time and all the kids want to do is watch TV, we think we should resign and stay at home.

But how about this: the grass isn’t greener on the other side.
The grass is greener where you water it. And the grass that is watered consistently and also fertilized is greenest of all.

Forget those other moms. Or better yet, wish them well. Because for each and every one of us, some days it’s the elevator, some days it’s the shaft.

Look at your life and deal with the What Is.

Right here, right now.

You’re at home with your kids. Good for you. A big part of being a mom is being there. Period. No matter who you are and how you nurture. You’re a warm, sentimental snuggling mom, or you’re a straightforward, no-nonsense mom, but you’re a mom who is there. Your joy and your challenge is that. Being there. With them. All the time. So much so, that you’ve forgotten who you are, besides being the slave to these tiny tyrants.

This is my life. For now, for these few years when my girls are small, I’m in it. I am the mom, the overseer, and the person on duty. Last fall, while we were on Kaua’i, I got a gig in L.A. and I needed to go for a week. I took Brody with me.

Other times, I’ve had to go to New York, or abroad, and I put on my warrior/tour guide/secretary/professional organizer hat. I pack up the girls—book their tickets, launder their clothes, match their socks, find their hairbrushes, put together snacks, charge up the electronics, all in addition to getting myself together—and haul them, and their babysitter, who watches them while I’m at work, along with me. Could I leave them all at home? Of course. Do I prefer to take the shit storm on the road? Absolutely.

Bela, at sixteen, has her own life. She comes and goes. But while my other girls are little, they’re with me. Of course I realize that I’m absurdly lucky to have such flexibility. But just because I’m lucky that doesn’t mean I don’t lose it on a regular basis.

Working-in-an-office moms have other issues. You’re an attorney, a teacher, a phlebotomist. Every morning you leave and every night you come home, hoping you’ll have some time to be with your kids before you have to get up and do it again the next morning. Maybe there’s a house-husband whipping up the noodles with butter (served with baby carrots from a bag), or maybe you have a nanny. Or maybe you have to scoop the kids up from daycare before six.

Then, finally, you’re home, and the clock is ticking on mother-children time, and it’s tough. Kids have their own rhythms. You can’t nurture them on demand. On the other hand, you experience the deep satisfaction of providing food, shelter, and clothes—or at least some of those things—for your children. They literally couldn’t survive without you. Also, you have an identity out in the world; you’re not just Sarah and Michael’s mommy. You also get a little downtime at work, hanging out in the break room, bopping downstairs for a latte. The kind of breaks mothers at home never get, unless they’re blessed with children who nap.

These are the trade-offs.

I see the word “trade-off” and it seems like such an old-fashioned concept, like a black-and-white TV. Even though we give lip service to knowing that we can’t “have it all,” I
think we secretly believe that we can, and because we don’t, we need to change something, quit our job if we have one and stay home with the kids; get a job and put the kids in day care if we don’t. That damn grass is always beckoning from the other side of the fence.

Deal with the What Is.

Do the best you can.

Do the best you can do and be honest. If your kids get on your case and say, “You work all the time!” it’s just something you have to hear. You can point out that this is life. That people work for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is providing for their children. Point out that you’re there for them every night and every weekend.

Perhaps you decide that Wednesday evenings are going to be your night together. Maybe you make an effort to get off work early that day, and have your one-on-one time or your one-on-three time. You do a special mommy-three-kid dinner night. And maybe Sunday you have a crazy kid-centered brunch. Whatever it is. You try to carve out time so that you can make those moments mean something.

I’m all for bringing kids into adult-land. It’s all well and good to race home and throw on your sweats and roll around on the floor with the kids, but it’s equally as good for them to come into your adult world. Maybe once a month your kid spends the last few hours of your workday with you. You pick her up, or someone drops him off, and you set up a little desk, and they get to see what it’s like being you.

Last year Laird was featured on Oprah’s Master Class series,
and one day Reece decided to watch it. She’s adores her father and complains often and loudly about how he spends more time in the ocean than he does with us.

One afternoon after I’d picked the girls up from school, Reece asked if we could stop by the surf barn to see him. On the way, she launched into a rant that shows, if nothing else, the girl has a talent for sermonizing.

“Did you know that not counting sleeping Daddy spends more time with the Ocean than with us? Besides Sunday, but that’s if there’s no swell. All the time he plans his days around what the Ocean is doing.”

I tried not to laugh, but I was amused at her ability and willingness to lay it all out there, a daughter’s privilege. Could you imagine if I, as his wife, let loose that kind of diatribe?

Then, from the backseat, comes Brody’s little voice: “Yeah, he loves the Ocean more than us!”

I tried to explain to the girls that being in the Ocean was both Daddy’s job and what makes Daddy
Daddy
. I said that when you love people, you try and understand what they need, and help get them it. “When you want to go off and play with your friends, Dad doesn’t guilt you out about it, does he?” I said. I think I might have even thrown in something about “How do you think we buy toys?”

Reece is no pushover. I could tell she wasn’t convinced and was just waiting for me to stop talking. Finally, she said, “I know it’s his job, but he likes it too much. Even when he hangs out with me what do we do? He takes me surfing. Where? The Ocean.” She was committed.

I think she moved off her position a little when she watched the documentary. I could see by the expression on her face that she had a new appreciation for what her dad did, for what he has done, and for how he views the world.

Don’t be afraid of showing your kid what it is you do all day. You can take a kid who’s seven or eight to the office, and let her watch you working the phone, or making a decision or arriving at an agreement, having your assistant coming in and out and buzz buzz buzzing. Then, when you tell them at home that you’re going to work, they know what that means. They still might not have any real clue what you’re doing there, but they know that something happens there. It’s not just this mysterious place that takes you away from them.

Often, I think of it like this: rather than running around bemoaning how overwhelmed you are, consider a baseball game. The pitcher and first baseman are working all the time. They’re part of the game, part of the outcome, part of the action. They’re not just standing in the outfield, twiddling their thumbs. The game is won or lost depending on how they play.

Like them, we are high-impact people. In the office, with our partners, with our children, and in our community, we’re always involved. It may be exhausting, but it’s much richer and more fulfilling than being out in right field.

No matter what’s going on in your life, whether you’re a mom working at home, or a mom working at the office (or a dad working in the ocean), don’t punish yourself. Guilt not only accomplishes nothing, it often prevents us from making real changes. A friend who used to write a column for a major magazine noticed over the years that many of the questions she received were from women who lived in a state of perpetual guilt because they didn’t think they spent enough time with their kids, or they spent all their time with their kids and secretly hated it, or they worked part-time and when they were at work they felt as if they should be at home and when they were at home they felt as if they should be at work. The one thing they all had in common is that they were clobbered by guilt. But it was as if admitting to feeling guilty, they didn’t have to change anything. They were snuggled up in their guilt security blankets.

They were also surprised that their lives were busy and challenging and full of compromises and strife. As if somehow they’d been betrayed by the movie fantasy of being married and a mother that they’d expected. Modern life is complicated, and we’re all forced to make choices. To say that you feel terrible about the choice you’ve made, and then to go ahead with it anyway—that’s not a good message to send to your kids. It’s putting blood in the water. It’s telling them, in essence, that you know you’re doing wrong by them.

It’s similar to when your child falls down. The other day Brody was taking a nap on the couch and rolled right off and smacked her head on the floor.
Boom!
She rolled over and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. There was a long minute of silence, and then she howled. Laird strode over and scooped her up, but he was matter-of-fact. He checked out the bluish egg already rising on her forehead, trying to evaluate whether or not she was seriously injured. A popular saying will tell you all you need to know about the quality of medical care on Kaua’i: “When in pain, get on the plane.”

But he kept telling her she was okay. He didn’t panic and say “Oh my god! You hit your head really hard. Are you all right?” Saying that would convey to her that maybe she wasn’t all right. (Brody was fine.)

In the end, no matter where we find ourselves, there are lessons to be learned, and the best one might be that life offers no guarantees, and that often you just have to make the best of things. It’s no one’s fault. It’s not as if you could have done anything differently. It’s just the What Is.

Sometimes I wonder if what does us in, expectationswise, are the holidays. Would we be able to accept the realities of life behind the white picket fence if we didn’t have to stage a never-ending cavalcade of precious-memory-creating
holiday celebrations, year in, year out? Especially when it seems as if every year the holiday season is getting longer; these days, it seems as though it starts with Back-to-School (not a genuine holiday, but all that new clothes, backpack and school-supply shopping feels festive) and ends with Easter.

My childhood wasn’t easy. After my father died, my mother and I bounced around a lot. So come holiday time, I’m always grateful that I’m not steeped in (imprisoned by) tradition. I don’t have to cope, every year, with the feeling that if I don’t make my mother’s prime rib and Yorkshire pudding on Christmas Eve that I’m not holding up my side of the circle of life. I have a little more familial elbow room around the holidays to do what feels right for the family, right now.

The question should be: Do we serve the holiday, or does the holiday serve us?

It’s lovely to have traditions, but one of them should also be the tradition of flexibility. Holidays with infants and toddlers are different from holidays with school-age children, middle schoolers, older teenagers, and college-age kids.

Trying to enforce the same traditions year in, year out is a recipe for depression and heartbreak. We don’t force kids to continue to believe in Santa Claus, and neither should we force ourselves to continue to roll out the Hollywood-style Christmas production every year. The year will come when your daughter, who used to love spending a week making snowman cookies with you, has been cast in the winter play
at school. Or, she’s playing a winter sport. Or, dum-de-dum-dum, she has a boyfriend and wants to spend every waking Christmas-y moment with him.

I realize it’s starting to seem as if Laird is the multipurpose go-to man for life lessons, but if you’ll indulge me: every morning he wakes up and plans his day according to what the weather is doing, which affects what the ocean is doing.

Every year, take a look around. What’s the fall been like? What’s going on with everyone? What’s going on with
you
? Maybe you’ve had the flu or been slammed at work or there’s been a death in the family. Maybe you’re beat. Conversely, maybe you’re feeling energized. You got a raise, or a new idea for a business you’d like to start, or your sister who lives in Rome is in town.

Also, there’s nothing that says you have to buy your tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and have your holiday party the first weekend in December, etc., etc. Some years you might be feelin’ it as you plow through those Thanksgiving leftovers and some years it might not hit you until December 15.