Abundance November 27, 2008

In a time in our world where so many have so little, I sometimes feel embarrassed about all we have. We are far from wealthy, but we have a cozy home, plenty to eat, manageable non-mortgage debt, and steady income.  We have wonderful friendships, and mostly healthy families that we get to see pretty frequently.

Most importantly, we have each other, and as Max, Elsie and I enjoyed a pre-Thanksgiving treat at Starbuck’s this morning, I thought about how huge that is in my life. We waited so long to be a family of three, and I really worried about how high my expectations were becoming of what family life would be for us.

Not everything has been expected. Not everything has been rosy or blissful (by any stretch).  But I cannot even describe how fulfilling it has been for me personally, and for us as a couple.  I am so thankful we took this leap of faith, and I am eager to see what the days, months and years ahead bring to our lives.

We really do live in abundance at our house, and I mean that in all the ways that truly matter.

Halfway home November 17, 2008

OK, we are a little more than halfway through the month, and I may be out of things to say. Don’t gasp, really, I do run out of babble eventually.

But Coco’s post made me think that yes, I do live a similar existence in some ways, but I don’t juggle nearly as much. And yet, I am tired.  I think there’s a reason people do this parenting thing a wee bit earlier than their 40s.

And am I completely overprotective to worry about the field trip my daughter is going on tomorrow? It sounds delightful; they are going to one of the best bookstores in town for storytime, then to the nearby bakery. Really, it looks fun — I wanna go!  Trouble is, they are going on a bus.  No childseats, just seatbelts.  My baby isn’t even three yet.  But I don’t want to be “that mom,” so I signed the permission slip.  Still, I worry…

Home again, naturally November 15, 2008

What, that’s not how the song goes? Ah, well.

Got home yesterday afternoon to Elsie having a complete post-nap breakdown and Max desperately in need of a break. It was about as far from a warm fuzzy as you could get, and I was definitely let down. I was so eager to come home, and I was greeted by a screaming child and a husband pretty much checked out (really, he went to bed at 9 p.m., and we hardly talked at all).

I stewed about it, but decided not to stir the pot with Max, and I just mostly hung out with Elsie, working our way back into a routine. It didn’t help that about 5 minutes before bed time, she fell off a stool in the kitchen and cracked herself on the head pretty good. I was terribly worried, and kept her up late to make sure she was ok (and compulsively checked on her for the first two hours she was in bed), but all seemed ok.

This morning, all is back as it should be. Max got an apparently much needed 10+ hours of sleep, Elsie woke up in a spectacular mood, and we’ve had the most delightful day. We had breakfast with our coffee group, and Elsie socialized and played with all of them, then settled in to read and chop paper into bits (scissors are a favorite right now, and she’s finally mastering them). We came home and played, and she happily settled into her nap.

Ah, now I can exhale.

Coco, I thought of you as we listened to Sound Money on the way to breakfast, and they were saying that the average family spends $15-18K a year to put their child into fulltime daycare (I know your topic was preschool, but I was focused on the cost part). I am grateful to pay far less than that (although we are four days a week vs. five), and to be really happy with our school, but we really lucked into our situation. We waited 18 months for our spot, and we didn’t find anything comparable at a remotely reasonable price.

It is shameful that there aren’t more great preschool options that are affordable. And we have unfortunately sacrificed diversity in our case, but to find it, we’d have to drive quite a bit and sacrifice quality. We are blessed with an extremely diverse immediate neighborhood, and we are starting to explore elementary schools with that in mind, but in our suburb (and much of our area), we know we are going to have to settle for a moderate level of diversity. I am glad Elsie will see diversity in both her neighborhood and at our church, which is both closer to the city and has an amazingly active adoptive family community, so I will have to hope it is enough.

As usual, I have rambled off topic, so must be time to go.  Maybe I’ll even take a short nap. And it really is lovely to be back home.

Oh, how I hate business travel November 8, 2008

I leave tomorrow for my longest business trip yet since we’ve been home with Elsie.  I’m gone from Sunday through Friday, which seems like forever at the moment.

Any other moms travel much for work (or otherwise travel without your kids)?  What do you do to prepare your kids for your absence, and what special things do you do while you’re gone and when you return to help ease the pain?

Keep a good thought for Max this week.  I only THINK I’m stressed.  He’s the one who gets to single parent for almost a week…

Fifi’s Confessions April 2, 2008

-Sadie eats about ten things, consistently, and I allow this to happen. Sure, I know what “they” say about exposing a child at least 15 times to a food before they accept it…but do I practice it? Um, no. Sometimes. But mostly no.

-I still sleep in her room about 90% of the time. Because I am lazy. And deep down, I think that we both still need this.

-The majority of her wardrobe is either gifts, hand-me-downs, thrift shop or ebay finds, and stuff that I pick up on clearance the season prior. I cannot remember the last time that I bought something full-price. Mainly because I spent an embarassing amount when she first came home.

-I have totally told her that a certain irritating toy or DVD or CD is broken. And it isn’t. Yes, I LIE. Stone me.

-I have lost total control over the amount of pink/Disney/princess/toy cell phones/sparkly-stuff that has invaded my home. All things that I swore would never be in her rotation pre-Sadie.

-I gave up carrying the uber-cute Petunia Picklebottom bag soon after she came home, and now? I still lug a beaten up black back-pack that is full even after potty training. Why? I do not know.

-I make her a seperate meal, nearly all the time. Ken totally calls me the short order cook and smirks over conversations that we had when I said this would.never.fly.in.my.house….yeah.

 -I bribe. Enough said.

-I let her eat in the living room sometimes. While I blog. But only once in a while.

-I totally have some trainwreck blogs in my Favorites. Totally.

-There are days that I am relieved to come to work. I feel like crap about it, but there it is.

-I will still feed Sadie, often because she asks me to. Sometimes out of habit.

-I have kept her out of pre-school to have a “fun day”…and have let her get a “mini” pedi already.

-I have thrown away art work that was just like about ten other pieces that I saved.

-I haven’t completed her lifebook, and have failed to send my monthly email to her SWI more than a couple of times.

-I totally don’t know if I am using the best language or reinforcing her story for her…and have to admit to stumbling the first time she asked “why?” when we talked about being placed in the SWI after she was found.

-Speaking of language, she has heard me utter words that I am really not proud of. And? She repeats them. Giggling.

-I let her stay in her pj’s all day, most weekends. I don’t brush her hair on those days, either.

-I hover too much, and feel the looks from other parents.

-I get frustrated easily, and walk away sometimes to gather my emotions.

- I probably don’t dress her as warmly as I should, because I don’t like to be too warm.

-We still have gates up, but mostly to keep the dogs at bay. But still….yikes.

-I get bored sometimes playing the same games over and over and over.

-Same with reading the same books, sometimes twice or more in a row.

-I clean up after her too much, not reinforcing that she has to pick up her own toys.

-I like buying girly stuff. A lot.

-I also put the cutesy hair stuff in, even knowing that she will eventually pull it out. I tell myself it is because I am keeping her bangs at bay. And it sorta is the reason…sometimes.

-I feel proud when she sneers at someone exclaiming “She is SO BEAUTIFUL! What a little DOLL!” in public. And I don’t apologize for it. I like that she is already protesting being objectified.

-I dig that she is into me more than she is anyone else, most of the time.

-We quit speech therapy early. It was a gamble, and it turned out in our favor. I lost sleep over it, and still beat myself up about it.

-I quit fighting the grandmothers over crappy gifts, and now just cycle them out.

-I long to travel, but worry about traveling with my girl. Need to get over this.

-I can sing most of the Disney Princess “theme” songs. Gah.

If I Were to Gripe April 2, 2008

I’d point out that in less than 48 hours, I need to read two books, write up a short report on each, plan the budget for a huge multi-year, highly political (in my workplace at least) initiative that I was just asked to do tonight and have had no time to consult with anyone on but must complete by Thursday, advise approximately 20 students on what courses to take in the fall, teach four courses (one of which is 2.5 hours in length), attend a meeting concerning the future of our school, meet with a student to explain why he got a B-, attend another meeting to find faculty to cover some courses because one of my instructors backed out, figure out how to award credit to two students going to Taiwan this summer for study abroad, write up a study guide for another book I didn’t like and thought I didn’t need to write until the summer until I was asked this week to finish it–oh–now, wrap Mavis’ birthday gifts, meet with my grad school advisor, choose some poems to read at a thing I have to go to for work on Friday night, organize Mavis’ birthday party–which includes fielding multiple phone calls from my overexcited mother, grade about 50 short papers, plan a lesson on a fourth book that I lost and can’t wing, figure out a schedule conflict for a student who needs to take both my class and another offered at the same time, and frost and decorate to look like dogs about 18 cupcakes for Mavis’ teachers and class. If I were to gripe, I would add that I have a cold, a sharp pain near one of my ovaries, and insomnia.

Not that I’m griping. But if I were, it would look something like this.

Update: To further prove that I’m using my limited time well (see: this blog post), I decided tonight, on a whim, to apply to a conference being held in Taipei, Taiwan, in November.  How would I pay for this?  Not so clear.  So I pulled together an abstract and sent it out.  Yeah, that was a wise use of my time.

Lulu’s Octosavers February 18, 2008

Not to get off track, but Octosavers makes me think of Creamsavers from Lifesavers.  Mmmmmmmmm.

A lot of my timesaving thoughts are similar to Coco’s, so my apologies for repeats. I will think of them as reinforcements instead.

1.  Hire a cleaning service. This is not a luxury.  Really. At my house, it’s the price of a happier marriage. If you love to clean, fine. But really, who loves to clean? And who wants to spend evening/weekend time on cleaning?  Not me.  Besides, our service does a better job than I do, and it forces us to clean up/tidy things every two weeks.

2. Reconsider what home cooking means. I enjoy cooking, but the universe has conspired to make pre-dinner time the witching hour for most kids. Add in the transition factor (i.e. I just got home), and a need to get dinner on the table quickly, and it isn’t generally pretty at our house. Like Coco, I heart Trader Joe*s, and I’ve also embraced Take-and-Bake places like Let*s Dish and S*ciale. And I truly do Take, I don’t go in and prepare stuff myself. I order online and pick it up. It takes some trial and error to find dishes that are easy to fix and tasty, but I’m getting good at spotting a winner on their menus.  Combine this with take out, eating out, and fending for yourself (ok, I don’t make Elsie “fend,” really) some nights, I can still satisfy my love of true cooking from scratch while really only having to “cook cook” 1-2 nights a week.

3.  Project time = fun time.  This may sound idiotic, and I’m sure other people do this all the time, but since I do work all week, I used to save nearly every “chore” I needed to accomplish until after Elsie’s bedtime. But recently, I’ve taken a few organizational projects and turned them into fun/together time. One example was organizing Elsie’s out of season clothes and sorting them by season into categories like donate/consign/regift.  I spread the project out on our futon in the basement, brought her down there, put on a video we hadn’t seen in a while and pulled out some toys that hadn’t had recent attention.  We chatted and sang during the video, and while I took more than a few play breaks, it was great to get something productive done and have fun with her at the same time. Plus, it gave my husband some free time to catch up on some reading, which earned me sleep in time the next day. Ah, the wins never stop… 

4.  Yeah, me too.  I am just going to chime in a “yes, me too” on a few of Coco’s items.  Baths are definitely every other night, we take Elsie all sorts of places (she loves to go bye-bye, and even enjoys grocery shopping to a point — other types of shopping, no way), and our girl loves the occasional You Tube video. She loves to look at blogs with photos of little kids even better. Sadly, she loves to look at photos of herself even more.  I can review email while she looks at photo slideshows from China or when we were first home.  It’s nice in a pinch.

I don’t know what else I do to save time. I guess I’m still figuring it out.

I used to be able to run more errands over lunch than I have done lately, but that’s always nice. I also try to get into the office quite early every once in a while so I can leave early without setting a bad example (I have a “work from home” abuser on my staff). It’s amazing what I can accomplish when I get home an hour before Elsie does.

I’m particularly interested in ideas others have around #3 above. I know I need to be more productive in general, but I don’t want to do too much tag-team parenting where my husband plays with Elsie while I do this thing, then I play with her while he does something else. It’s too tempting to fall into that pattern…

Coco’s Octosavers February 15, 2008

I’m not actually a very efficient or organized person, so it’s kind of funny for me to write out my ten best timesavers, but Lulu, who has all the big ideas around here, suggested it, and I was game (mostly because I want to hear from others). It’d be easier to write a list of the things I really *should* do (especially: not nap when Mavis is napping and I am home [but I often do], pack things the night before [can't seem to get myself to do this], etc.) than to give advice on what works for us, but here’s the best honest version I can offer.

1. Hire a cleaning service. It’s worth it. Ours comes twice a month on my longest work day. Our cleaning guy uses only environmentally friendly products that he makes himself (he used to be a chemist). I used to be embarrassed about hiring a service, but now I’m strangely not. Cleaning my house is not my domestic womanly duty.

2. Trader Joe’s. We live very near one. If we eat meat for dinner (which isn’t v. often), we almost always have gotten it from Joe’s: preprepared fish, some good chicken/apple sausage, or even their barbequed shredded chicken in a pinch. Mavis loves their freeze-dried mangoes and their free balloons; I love the fast in and out of the store. We also are fond of their premade pasta things, curries in a box, and 90-second microwaved rice things (Mavis hearts the multigrain pilaf). I have also rediscovered of late my Crock Pot and am trying to remember to use it. We also like to sometimes go to a grocery store salad bar and just make a giant salad for dinner, tossing some cans of tuna or hard-boiled eggs or whatever in for protein. The salad bar thing is nice because we don’t have to spend time chopping the ingredients and get more variety. (Perhaps we should have an Octorecipe post?)

3. If possible, do separate loads of laundry for towels/linens, etc. as well as separate loads for me, Jasper, and Mavis. This means I don’t have to sort the piles and rooms. In our house, everyone’s least favorite chore is putting laundry away. In my house, Jasper is responsible for putting away linens and his clothes, and I’m responsible for mine and Mavis’ (mostly because Jasper is woefully unable to understand women’s or girls’ clothing), so if I can’t do separate loads for each of us, I mix linens with Jasper and Mavis with me. My other new laundry innovation is to have a small basket in the kitchen that I use for dirty kitchen laundry. With Mavis, there is always kitchen laundry.

4. Buy a kitchen scissors. This has nothing in particular to do with being an Octomama, but I find a good kitchen scissors wildly helpful in prepping food that minimizes choking hazards. Way easier to cut a grape or dried apricot, say, with a scissors than a knife. I’m slightly evangelical about this.

5. Bathe Mavis every other night. I used to bathe her every night, but her skin was getting dry, so I cut back. Saves some time, too. When I do bathe Mavis, I try to straighten up the bathroom while I’m in there with her and she’s busy playing.

6. A video in the morning. Mavis’ old high chair is in our bedroom, and when I’m doing my hair, etc. in the morning, she sits in it and watches a video or Sesame Street. I am reluctant for Mavis to watch television at all, but I finally decided a few weeks ago that my impatience in the morning with her grabbygrabbygrabgrab while I was trying to get ready for work was probably, all told, more detrimental to her than 15-20 minutes of television/videos were. Sometimes I can do her hair while she sits in the chair. I also let her brush her teeth in the chair. I have also improvised toy makeup to give Mavis to put on while I’m doing mine and she’s with me in the bathroom. Sometimes I also put her in the tub in the bathroom to play, even if she is fully clothed and there is no water in it.

7. Bring Mavis places. Since we met her, we’ve always taken Mavis to grownup restaurants. We try to take her other places, too, within reason. Doing this is the only way to continue to see some of our friends, and we think it’s also good to raise a child who knows how to behave in public without Chuck E. Cheese or the like dancing about. Mavis is, for the most part, pretty good company. We also have toy suitcases with items that travel for emergency entertainment.

8. Stay firm about the hours I commit to sending Mavis to school. If I treat them as inflexible, work has to treat them that way too. It’s more respectful to Mavis’ childcare providers anyway.

9. Whenever possible, I get away from work to do work (I am lucky in that I don’t have to be in the office any particular hours except for my 3 office hours a week). I’m most productive when I can take my work to a coffee shop. When I’m in the office, I’m constantly distracted or interrupted, and it drives me crazy. Working outside of work is a hundred times more productive. I’m also generally bad at working at home, so the coffee time is really important. Most of my other Octosavers related to work relate specifically to teaching, so I won’t detail those here.

10. Try to make my time in the car with Mavis count. I talk to Mavis a lot in the car. It’s really easy to zone out as you’re driving, but I try pretty hard to make her car rides interactive and interesting before I drop her off, so that she feels attended to and less clingy when she leaves me. We talk about the other vehicles we see or about what so and so likes to do or about things she “remembers.” I like this talking we do, and she’s too mobile the rest of the day to really chat with me like she does when she’s stuck in her car seat. I like how it encourages conversation, and she often starts the conversations herself. It doesn’t save time per se, but it’s a more conscious use of time, I guess, so I mention it here. I admit, though, that the first mile of each drive in the morning usually has me just taking deep breaths to counter my deep sense of frustration lingering from my bumbling out the door a few minutes prior. The five or so minutes between my saying “let’s go” and my getting behind the steering wheel are consistently some of the least pleasant, most intensely stressful times of my day.

11. One more, which I recommend you use with caution: I learned to hold Mavis on my lap, while showing her a YouTube video (she, for instance, loves Jessica the hippo from South Africa–search for it!) in one window and working in another window. I thought I was a genius when I first came up with this one, but I soon found that whenever Mavis saw my laptop, she was moaning for Jessica or for whatever other video she could think of. I think her disinterest in the laptop is probably preferable, overall. But if you’re in a pinch….

Anyway, those are my ten or so meek attempts at timesaving. How are you grabbing a few extra minutes here or there?

Why I Work: Fifi’s Thoughts February 13, 2008

This topic? Throwing for me a HUGE loop. There is much to say about the topics of working outside of the home, and I am hardly the most qualified person to offer additional opinions. So, I can only speak for me, and that is my preface to this post…these are just my thoughts, and they may be jumbled.

If my income was not essential for our family, I would probably work part-time. I know that I would not stay in a full time position…or at least not the one that I am currently in. And that is part of the problem…are my thoughts on this topic colored by what is (currently) a very stressful and non-supportive working enviroment. I dunno.  I can tell you what the list that I jotted off in preparation for this post said:

Pro’s (in working outside the home):

-Guaranteed non-kid time…including lunches out (without cutting someone elses’ food up, cleaning up spilled drinks, and eating my own food while it is still warm)

-Disposable income

-Security in that if (for any reason) I am in a situation where I am without my partner, I can maintain my daughter’s lifestyle and still plan for our future.

-A sense of accomplishment and satisfaction outside of my home (and my roles as a mother and a wife)

Con’s (in working outside of the home)”

-A huge block of time every day that is taken from my own interests

-Stress that is sometimes hard to dump once I get home

-A feeling of missing out on Sadie day to day…and I do feel that, often. My mom, my husband, and her caregivers get more time each day than I do. I never expected for that to bother me, but it does.

-Constant nagging feeling of being behind on EVERYTHING…home, work, personal, public obligations.

Like Coco and Lulu have already written (beautifully, of course)…I do derive a solid sense of self from achieving and promoting professionally. I was always tagged as the “smart girl”, too, both within my family and in school. It was never a question of if I would go to college, but instead it was when and where. I was the first in my immediate family to complete college, and I did it largely on scholarships and grants (but with a healthy amount of loans…got to love private Catholic college tuition!).  When I entered the workforce, it was jarring to be just one of many, but I began to find ways to distinguish myself. As a result I have promoted and am the primary breadwinner in my marriage. For many years I carried our health benefits, and if I am being honest I fed into this role…I was carrying a burden, but it was MY burden, it was a great way to highlight my role as caregiver, as the responsible one.

When we decided to adopt, it was after years of infertility. I had never questioned whether I would work after we became parents..it was a given in our situation. So I was surprised and dismayed (yes, I was..) with my own reactions after Sadie came home. I was angry that I had to go back, that I didn’t have a choice. I mourned the days that I would be missing before I even went back, and it was a huge part of my depression issues. I remember crying on and off (in the bathroom, of course…why do we always find ourselves sobbing in the bathroom when things get crazy?) the whole first day I was back in the office. I was rabid to get home to Sadie, and when I got there?

She was as cool as a cucumber. As the days and weeks went by, she positively thrived in the extra time with her daddy, with her grandma, and eventually with her teachers at pre-school. I realized that the time that we spent together also enhanced, as I was focused and we really rocked out the time that we were together. My longevity with my employer was a bonus, too, as I have a large block of vacation and personal time to utilize when I do want to take time to be at home. All in all? It has turned out really well.

So, back to the first paragraph. I believe firmly that working does make me a better mom…but I don’t necessarily think that full time is the best thing for me as a woman. There is much that I want to pursue creatively that I just do not have the time for, and I do wish that I had the choice and the options to explore those paths. For now, I am making the best of it, and really? It is going much better than I could have hoped for.

This balancing act is one of the hardest things that I have ever done. A lot of the worry has fallen away, but has been replaced by its cousin fatigue. Some days are good, some not so good. But the important stuff gets done, and I am healthy and able enough to get up and do it all again.

Looking forward to more discussion on this.

Why I Work: Coco’s Meanderings February 12, 2008

Lulu suggested that we start by writing about why we work. Well, let’s be honest. First of all, there are many days that I don’t know why I work and many days when I wish I didn’t work. I work in academia, in an unglamorous position with a lot of responsibility but little in the way of compensation (and I count time as a major form of compensation). I’m often bitter about the fact that my job duties keep expanding and that my compensation does not. My job is prestigious in that I can say I’m a college professor, but my salary is modest and hours extensive, the work too often surprisingly repetitive and/or drudgy. Also, my students can be incredible bores, or worse.

At other times, though, I get all misty about my job. I like most students–especially the handful of students that I most closely advise/teach in a program that I created. My students are mostly first-generation or working-class students, and I like serving this population. I can’t think of any other job that I’d be good at and also really have an opportunity to improve the world (especially when I teach courses that touch on social justice issues). I have interesting colleagues. I get paid to think.  My work is sometimes very creative. My job is different semester to semester. I only have to go into the office three days a week (though I do an awful lot of work at home, in coffee shops, at night, on the weekends), and I get to (for the most part) choose which days I go in for each semester. I can teach at night if necessary. It’s cool that I get to read things and think about them and call that my job (sometimes). If I get sick, I don’t go to work, and no one asks me where I was. My job is basically recession-proof. And I’m pretty good at my job, so I feel competent, which is a nice way to feel, I suppose.

My job is meaningful even if it is not always pleasurable, and that’s a big part of happiness.

But there are other reasons more practical and fundamental. I work because we need the money to support certain choices we’ve made (such as where we are sending Mavis to school—just a decent public school system with strong diversity, nothing fancy). But also because, for instance, I’m not comfortable with depending on my husband’s money or with withering my professional credentials, even though our finances are intertwined and my safety nets intact.

I work because I grew up as a “smart girl,” defining myself as a good student. When I stopped being a good student, I became a good teacher. It’s pretty close to how I conceive of who I am, for better or worse. I’m also recovering, still in some ways, from a serious workaholism that really did go overboard in my first few years out of (my first round of) graduate school. From 2000 until about 2003, I worked nearly every single moment. My first year out of graduate school, I was working 40 hours a week at a cubicle job and then teaching three college classes as an adjunct instructor in the evenings. I became a full-time instructor the next year but took on mounds of freelancing work. I was always afraid I wouldn’t have money around the corner. I also believed that working hard and well was what I was about.  In those last two sentences, you see the influence of my (long divorced) mother and father, respectively, who have wildly different views on and experiences with money, both of which have been oppressive to me at different points in time and for different reasons.

I think I’ve mostly gotten over that, but it hasn’t made me want to work less.  Since we adopted Mavis, I’ve actually found that I cared more rather than less about my work.

In the summer when I was home with her all day, I was often intensely bored. I was simply not as good a mother to Mavis when I was home with her all day as when I spent quality time with her. We both seemed to need some stimulation outside of the house–stimulation that taking her to a Gymboree or Kindermusik class really wasn’t going to achieve on my end.

I realize now that I work because it makes me a better mother both in the short- and long-term. I hope that as Mavis grows up and sees my work she will learn the value of her own brains and service to the community. I hope she will see that my voice is important to other people besides her dad and herself. I hope she will believe that her intellect, her service, and her voice matter. I’m not saying that I couldn’t teach her those things without working, but I think working helps.

Frankly, I also think it matters that women are equally represented (in terms of numbers and influence) in work, and we can’t do this if we all stay at home. I notice that my husband, Jasper, has no pressure on him to explain why he works, no need to rationalize his not staying home with Mavis. And that just isn’t fair. I work in part so that if when Mavis gets older and has her own child and keeps soldiering on at whatever it is she becomes (I’m predicting now some sort of singing veterinarian / talk show host), she won’t have to bother to explain why.  I work so that if I someday have a son or a nephew, he can stay home if he wants to without it reflecting on him or his partner one way or the other.

Mavis puts a pressure on me. Her presence means that if I am actually going to live up to my hopes for myself, I have to set the time aside. There’s an urgency now. I have to find the space to be those things I could easily put off for “someday. Mavis is a gentle–okay, not so gentle–nudge to put up or shut up.

I can’t put up all the time, and I should probably shut up more than I do (all my work colleagues are intimately familiar with my meaningful sighs).  But I am making headway, I believe, toward something that matters. There are many ways to matter in the world, of course, and many ways to raise a strong daughter at home in her own voice.  But working is the way I think I can be most effective to her and to the world, as a mother and as an individual.  So, I guess, that’s why I work.  And it’s why, to be honest, I don’t feel so guilty about that choice.