Christine Roome recounts the harried moment when she was late for volunteer duties at her son’s school and ponders the seemingly age old question of work/life balance.
I had my Sarah Jessica Parker moment today. No, not Sex in the City. The other one from I Don’t Know How She Does It? At the end of a meeting, I looked at my iphone.
11:20 a.m.
10 minutes to trek across the University Campus to my son’s elementary school. I’m Running in my skirt and dress boots. I wonder if I still have to go to the gym? I arrive late, sweaty, hair having rearranged itself in a birds-nest-kind-of-way. Flashback to my own childhood when I was the last kid standing in front of my school – wondering if my mom would ever come. Now, I get it.
I enter his classroom – a not-so-delicate-glow of sweat lighting my face – and I am a lunch-time volunteer. Corbin is so happy to see me. Work behind me, I’m in his world meeting his friends. One hour later, work starts creeping back and I start making lists in my head. My son has velcroed himself to my skirt.
I am talking to the other Moms – who stay at home – my defences go into high gear. We are are own worst enemies – women. We judge each other and ourselves and nobody, but nobody gets a break. It’s a cliché for me to say that ‘they’ don’t think I’m raising my own kids and yet I am standing there assuming that is what they are thinking. Feminism got us out into the workforce, but where is she now?
“It must be so hard,” they say. I answer with “It is hard,” but I don’t offer a counter argument for why I do it. Truth is, I don’t always know. But, I need both my work and my kids and when I think about answering the question “how does she do it?” All I can come up with is “not very well.” Sometimes work gets the short end of the stick and other times my kids don’t get enough of me.
Google hits for search terms “stay at home vs. working mothers” are aplenty. I just trust that it will all be fine and know that – hard as it is – I have to honour who I am or I will be miserable to myself, to my husband and to my kids.
Photo Credit: I Don’t Know How She Does It trailer. UTube
Thanks Mom and Thanks Margaret. The scrutiny, indeed. It’s awful. Oh, and Gil – I’m hoping that in honouring who I am, I’ll teach my sons to honour who they are. 🙂
Christie, that was me you waited for those many years ago – and you waited many times. Like you I felt guilty at times, but also new I had to be me. You new I loved you and would walk to the edge for you and your brother. But, I think you also new or learned that we are not just one person, but many. You dear Christie, are a person, a human being, I am so proud of. You do excess in trying to be everything, but, I also think you had a mentor! So if anyone should feel guilt I should. I don’t because you have grown to be a thinking, sensitive person, to be yourself as I am still myself, as well as mother, wife, grandmother, sister, friend, citizen. You have my respect.
“Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.”
― Gloria Steinem
Hi Christine,
You’ve said it in a nutshell. One of my friends told me that she was,indeed, a better mother because she went to work. We’re all trying. We all love our children. But, man, the scrutiny!! I stayed home until my youngest was 6 (in school full-time) and I remember feeling quite envious of my working mother friends. They got to wear nylons and short skirts, got to go to after work mixers and cocktail parties, got to go to the bathroom without being interrupted. Then one day when I was working again, I was called to the school to pick up my son who had come down with a temperature at recess. A stay at home, school volunteer-helper Mom came right up to us in the playground as we were leaving and said “I don’t care if you’ve got to work, he belongs at home!” God knows what my son had told her!
IMHO, honoring who we are is of paramount importance in our human journey.
You … Christine, are doing just fine 🙂