You Don’t Have To Choose

My mom is one of the smartest people I know. No, she didn’t find the cure for cancer or design a rocket that shoots humans into space. She didn’t invent the world’s fastest computer or write a classic American novel. But, she did, and continues to, raise two (fairly well-adjusted?) kids while working a full time job and handling my father who, like a typical man, can barely boil water or load a washing machine. A lot of stories in the news say women have no choice: that they are ‘forced’ into choosing to stay home with their young children. Well, from my experience, they aren’t.

My mom is great, but she doesn’t have superpowers. She doesn’t cook…ever. Well, there was that one time with the taco fiasco, but I won’t go into that now. Sometimes, she was late picking me up from soccer practice or school. She would pull up sharply, her hair frazzled from a long day at work and an out of breath “sorry guys”. You get used to it. She didn’t come to every soccer game or bake for every fundraiser. But, she understood the important stuff. After every school musical, even though I never had the lead, I could always count on a huge hug and a beautiful bouquet of flowers. She stayed up all night with me my junior year of high school helping me write the Andrew Jackson term paper that I artfully put off until the last second. Old habits die hard I guess. When I felt sick as a kid, she would read Greek myths to me until I fell asleep.

What I’m trying to say is I never felt neglected. Sure, sometimes it got frustrating when Katie’s mom was always the first in the carpool line, smiling her megawatt smile with silky blonde coiffed hair. But with a little patience, my mom would eventually pull up, sometimes even with snacks from the bakery in her office. Sometimes it was annoying not to see her in the stands cheering me on, but she would always ask a million questions about the game when I got home. The point is, she always found a way to show me how much she really cared. She didn’t always have to be there.

I remember the first time I visited my mom’s office. We had to weave through the DC rush hour traffic just to reach a building that looked like every other building on the block. Grey. We walked through halls lit with fluorescent lights. Printers and fax machines and copiers were whirring incessantly all around. I honestly didn’t understand why anyone would want to work there. But then I realized his was her place. She had to share our house with a dog that never seemed to stop shedding, a cat who’s only hobby was to claw at furniture, a husband who thought oatmeal was an acceptable dinner, and two daughters who accidentally (I promise!) got makeup on the walls and left clothes literally everywhere. At her office, she was in charge of her space. The only finger paint on the walls was hung there on purpose. It’s like she lived in two worlds, one ruled by chaos and school science projects and the other ruled by cases and laws.

I think that is the key to the freedom of choice. A lot of women try to merge their worlds, letting the work blend into the home. Then, even when they are with their families, they feel that weight of the work on their mind. That’s why they feel like they have to choose: they can’t separate the experiences. When the home world starts to close in, they have nowhere to escape to. Somehow, my mom figured it out. She’s not a superhuman. I promise you she sleeps (and snores really loudly). She doesn’t have Hermione’s time-turner. She just luckily managed to find that perfect balance. She didn’t come to every game, she was rarely on time, and she cooked a homemade meal maybe once a month. But when she did these things, she was fully present. She skipped nimbly between her worlds, choosing to occupy both.