The daily act of catching your breath and keeping your balance
By MARY JO MELONE
Published May 24, 2004
At week's end, there were dishes in the sink, stray socks on the bathroom floor, balls of dog hair under the sofa, and if I didn't look, I risked kicking a stuffed animal and coloring pens across the room in my house that multitasks as an office and playroom.
It's a terrible word, multitask: bloodless, awkward and describing the ability of my PC to do two or more things at once. Well, I am no computer. If the knife slips when I am chopping vegetables, I need a Band-Aid. Go back to that scene where I have to take care to avoid tripping: Clumsiness comes as easily to me as shot-putting to an Olympian.
I've had to learn to multitask. I've had no choice. I'm a working mother.
When my daughter was born six years ago, I sailed into this role without so much as a glance at the ground.
I had no foresight of the crammed hours, how I would dash to get her at school, then work late, her at my side, then get home and serve a dinner that was a) hot, b) included a vegetable, and c) served on plates that lay on placements or a tablecloth.
There had to be time for d) homework, e) some play, f) her bath, g) cuddling and reading before bedtime, and h) bedtime.
Who falls asleep first is sometimes an open question.
You can only pull this off if you are profoundly organized. This is the best I have achieved so far: a list on the refrigerator door that counts how many hamburgers, fish sticks, pork chops, hot dogs and chicken breasts I have in the freezer for dinner.
I am as proud of that list as I am of any column I've written. For if I can keep track of what's for dinner, I have established a toehold of order to the ricochet rhythm of my life.
There's supposed to be a better way. You see the phrase in all the women's magazines: balancing work and family. Balancing, as in balancing act, act being the operative word. This is an act, a phony notion, not really achievable. If you catch me on a bad day, this is how I feel. I want to toss up the white kitchen towel of surrender.
I berate myself for what I do not do. I get impatient. I hear how the brusqueness of my voice contrasts with the gentle chatter of my child. Is she really meant to be coloring at my feet when I bring her to the office because the day's work is not finished?
I know this subject is old hat, so old among working parents that a sharp editor could look me in the eye and ask the deflating question, "What's new?"
It's new when it happens to you. I was so blind, arrogant even, that six years ago I thought I could manage just fine. These years have put me in my place, deflated me in a way no editor could.
I understand why some of the things we considered normal as children are getting rare. It's hard to lead Scout troops, volunteer at school and coach baseball, let alone make play costumes and help out on science projects, when your hours are overbooked. I understand why many women cut back on their hours, share jobs or give up the fancy title for a lesser assignment so they can go where their hearts pull them, to their children.
And I understand why so many of us keep believing in balancing work and family. So many of us need to work; we would be unable to provide for our children if we didn't. So many of us love to work; without it, our children would be raised by dissatisfied, unchallenged women.
That's me. I struggle. My daughter knows how to jump rope, go hide 'n seek, and find her way around Barbie.com. She's also learning what the pictures in the paper depict, who the mayor is and the meaning of the word rewrite. She's learning, I hope, the truth of that Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You'll Go! When she's a grown woman, she'll go places all her own.
Friends who have been balancing the two halves of their lives longer than I say I won't ruin her, that she's sturdy like all children. This is supposed to reassure me, but it goes only so far. I still fantasize about throwing in the kitchen towel. I won't. But I'm not sure I entirely believe my friends. I hang onto their words in an act - there's that word again - of faith.
