We Are All Working Moms

I grew up in Lahaina, Hawaii. Well, kinda. We moved to the other side of the island when I was 10-ish. My parents divorced and my dad moved our family to Paia. He had full-custody of my siblings and I and my mother lived with her boyfriend, now husband, in various towns on the island. (Boyfriend sounds strange as he's my "other dad.")This isn't about my dads.

My mother, Rose, has always been a working woman. She went back to work, I'm assuming, a few years after I was born. She's always worked in the banking industry. She was, before recently, a corporate high mickey muck muck. She rolls with the big dogs. She is as intimidating as she is beautiful. Her business card reads: BOSS. Yet, she juggled her family life with her work life the way a clown would juggle random objects. She could keep all of the balls in the air at the same time and when one would fall, if that ever happened, she handled the problem at hand with diplomacy and tact. Usually.

She wasn't always corporate high roller, banker extraordinaire. She started as a teller in a small bank and then worked her way up. While she climbed her ladder she also commanded the "mommy ship." Her mornings, I'm sure she remembers, were scattered. There was yelling--especially when it came time to brush our hair. She never whipped up baked goods in pearls and business suits like Bree Vandecamp. Instead, she'd whip through Safeway in a hurry. Often, I'd forget to put lotion on my legs and she'd steal some from the cosmetics aisle on the way to checkout. Illegal as it may be, you can't help but laugh.

When she moved out, and we moved to Paia, she'd make the one and a half hour trip to see us during the week. She would bring us McDonalds in her beater car and would hold us while we cried. As a mother now, I can see how that would have broken her heart.

What my mother taught me is even without her job, that road that would lead to her home, her huge move, her cute clothes, her "modern-Nana-esqe", her Mustang, she would have still been a "working mother."

The world wants us to participate in industries. They want us to keep up with our equal counterparts--the men. The world expects things of mothers, all mothers, not just the mothers of children. They expect us to work, to climb, to drive, to learn, to continue, at the same time that we cook, clean, educate, raise the future, be the wife, the household glue. Where is the time?

And, if we choose to stay at home exclusively with the children, we are often judged, looked-down upon, and ridiculed because we haven't started our careers or shown tangible goods of contribution. We hold back on our own needs, our own desires like clothes and spa days, because we simply can not afford them. We put the needs of our children before our own and we often pay by our own embarrassment or by the overwhelming excess closet space.

So, I ask, where is the medium? Where are we happy enough with who we are, where we live, and how much money we make? Why are we torn constantly between home and work and work and home? When I stay home from work, or call in sick, why do I regret it? And, why if I am contributing to the financial aspects of our home, do I feel like I am not doing the best for my children when I can't whip up home made sweets and treats? The most important question of all...why wasn't I born a man so I could go to work, come home, go to sleep, repeat?