Kids Know
Every woman wants to know. Many men, maybe, too. But we don’t hear them asking nearly as much. Not all urgent, anyway, like we do. We pose the question to one another, to the “gurus,” to the Universe at large, our honest yearning squirting out unselfconsciously because we need to know: How do you balance it all?
As if Life and Work are at odds with each other, sparring for first chair.
Somehow, we (“we” meaning most women, with great backing from the world) have turned the two into a mathematical expression sitting to the left of an equal sign with perfect on the other side. Like the tortured professor in Good Will Hunting, we cipher and strive, squint and sweat . . . and then cipher and strive some more, only to ultimately slump, disheveled and defeated as the numbers don’t add up.
Life-Work-Balance is a pipe dream. A myth. A Hallmark Christmas movie with timely falling snow that never melts. It’s not that life and work don’t go together. The problem is they do – and have since before there were words for such things. So much so that they morph into each other. There is no perforation line.
As a “working mom” who desperately wanted to be All-World in every lane, I used to sign-up for helping with holiday class parties when my kids were in elementary school - even though it was impossible to know if I would even be in town when the date rolled around. And if I did happen to be in town, there was absolutely no telling what five-alarm fires would pop up on party day. But I always had BIG plans. Intricate, fancy, dessert-of-the-decade kind of plans.
“If you can see it, you can achieve it,” right? Who cares if the only dish I’ve ever been good at making is Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Heart-shaped cake pops decorated with pink mini-marshmallows for Valentine’s Day would be fantastic. If I wrapped them individually in cellophane and tied them in red ribbon meticulously curled by scissors, I could surely win the day. I was the leading lady of “Wonder Woman in an Apron” in my mind.
But real life snickered. As did, I’m sure, a bunch of other mothers who could actually bake a cake. Still, holiday after holiday, year after year, I cut out recipes and fashioned a plan that could make me Mom-of-the-Year for a day.
And without fail, when class party day arrived, I would screech into the grocery store parking lot on two wheels, slam the car in park, and dead sprint in to the cookie aisle. Then I’d race to the school where I’d run in breathless with my plastic Homeland bags in tow, plopping two packages of Oreos onto the pristinely decorated table next to the parade of sweets that looked as if they’d been cut out of Better Homes and Gardens. Even on my best days–the ones where the filling matched the color scheme of the holiday--I felt like an also-ran.
Several years into this Martha-Stewart-wanna-be stage of motherhood, I dropped my daughter off at Washington Elementary School on the Friday before Halloween. As she, in a jagged-hemmed black dress and a tall, pointed hat that almost doubled her height, slammed the car door and ran toward the building, I hit my forehead on the steering wheel and screamed. “I flippin’ did it again! I forgot about the party!“ Then to no one in particular, though sort of to my 6th grade son in the back seat who was waiting to be dropped off at middle school, “It’s official. I, literally, suck.”
We rode on the bloat of my self-flagellation the mile-and-a-half drive to drop-off number two. Awkward silence laced with aggravation took up almost all the space. When we arrived and Colton opened the door to exit, I felt like I’d fumbled the most important ball I had in the air.
Grabbing his backpack, he said before walking, “Mom, the Oreos always go first. Always.” Then he disappeared into a sea of tweeners dressed in copycat versions of Abercrombie and Fitch.
My tears escaped like hostages as Colt’s words pierced the invisible image I kept in my head of what I thought I was supposed to be. I drove away grateful for my newfound freedom from the weight.
There are a thousand ways to do it.
And none of them are perfect. What works for me won’t work for you—the same is true in inverse order.
Life and work won’t ever balance because the edges of both run. And the insides of each are messy to begin with. People often say, “Be where your feet are.” Who am I talking about…“people”…? I say it all the time! Being present - wherever it is - is a recipe for doing most anything well. But it’s a really, really hard thing to do. And when you are somebody’s mother, it doesn’t matter where your feet are. At least a toe or two is always there.
Coming clean about that opens a space for grace.
There simply is no such thing as a perfect score. Or a 50-50 split of time and focus. It’s a sloppy, mixed-up mess where good stuff happens –and not so good stuff, too - because you care deeply and try to do the best you can. There are so many ways to win.
We don’t need the scales. But Oreos never hurt.