I made this comment on my Facebook page the other idea: “Diane is finally feeling human again.” At the time I hadn’t thought through what I meant exactly so when someone asked if I had been sick I clarified that it was more that we had survived First Year of Baby. This is a more true statement, but at the same time it’s more than that.
It’s not only that Clare is one, is more predictable and interactive, able to express what she needs and wants, that she is a comedian in a pint sized package.
It’s not just that we can reliably get eight hours of sleep now.
It’s that on Monday our babysitter came over for an hour and we went to the Ballard Pool and swam laps together for the first time in over a year. We are hoping to make this a weekly ritual.
It’s that I am once again thinking about my career as a career, and not as “the work day I have to get through without fucking something up because I’m so tired.”
In hindsight, going back to work when Clare was three months old was overwhelmingly difficult. My job was at a very demanding stage. Clare was still waking up twice a night. I had to commute 40 minutes to Bellevue with her, drop her off at daycare, and pick her up at 5:00 because she would go to bed at 6:00 (we still make this commute together, but it’s a bit easier now that she’s older).
It’s the normal plight of the working mother. I know this. And it has made me realize that the working women I know who are still managing to move up the ranks in the business world should all be given gold medals. I’m just starting to think about my career, my personal goals within my career, all that stuff for the first time in over a year. Which makes me feel like ‘me’ again. I’m just not certain how to juggle everything still but I guess nobody is.
I had coffee with a friend recently who told me that “You are doing it, you are a successful working mom.” I hope that it appears that way. Sometimes it does feel that way nowadays. Just maybe not the days that I’m falling into my car or showing up for work when nobody else is there.
This article from Salon.com nails my fascination with Michelle Obama, this successful career woman who by her husband’s own admission has had to put his ambitions above her own, something the media hasn’t focused very much on (talking about her clothing is certainly a priority these days). Here’s a quick excerpt, but it’s well worth a full read:
“In all the worrying about how Sasha and Malia will adjust to having their lives turned upside down, in all the fretting about how Obama will move his Chicago-style shop to Washington, why is there so little curiosity about how Michelle will adjust to the loss of her own private, very successful, very high-profile and very independent identity? How will Michelle Obama feel as she becomes what she has long resisted — an extension of her husband?
In one of the smartest pieces that has been written about the next first lady, Geraldine Brooks’ profile of her in the October issue of More magazine, Brooks writes that while you can see Michelle’s life as the quintessential modern woman’s success story, the trajectory can also be read as a “depressingly retrograde narrative of stifling gender roles and frustrating trade-offs.” In serious ways, Brooks writes, “it is her husband’s career, his choices — choices she has not always applauded — that have shaped her life in the last decade.”
Michelle Obama has made a commitment to working mothers once she is in the White House. While she has stepped out of her own high-powered career to take on the role of First Lady, she has said, as quoted from the Chicago Tribune:
“…that as first lady she would provide a voice for working women and military families, in particular, ensuring that they receive adequate health care, mental health services and economic support.
“What I’m hearing around the country is that there are women who are struggling to keep their heads above water. And these issues transcend party and even socioeconomic status,” Obama said recently on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” “We need to give those issues a voice because I think women need a different model, a template, ensuring that we’re creating policies that actually make sense.”
