Observing US: A column about America, by Marylaine Block originally published by Fox News Online, 1998-2000

#35, May 6, 1999

LADY OF THE STOPWATCH

by Marylaine Block

Ah, mother's day! The day we celebrate the woman who put bandaids on our cuts, cooed over our kindergarten scrawls, and read us Goodnight, Moon 1700 times.

Oops. Maybe that was my mother, not yours, or for that matter, not you. My mother stayed home and raised four kids. When the census taker came and asked her what her profession was, she replied "drudge."

It wasn't that she didn't love us all, but she wanted more out of life than the world was prepared to give women then. During the depression, she dreamed of Amelia Earhart as she cooked chili with spaghetti in it to make the little bits of meat stretch further. She taught my sister and me to dream big, to believe that we could make a difference in the world.

My generation of women heard the siren song of Betty Friedan, looked at our stay-at-home mothers and saw women in a split-level prison, hostages to their children. We wanted careers, and we wanted to be married to a man, not a house -- no "I'm in love with my bathroom bowl-cleaner" for US. With the coming of the pill, we thought we could neatly arrange our children so they wouldn't interfere with our plans for our futures.

Oops, again. I guess we forgot that it is the mission of children to interfere with our plans, to do what THEY need to do, not what is convenient for us. We were so intent on what WE needed that we forgot, until they were squalling in our arms, how much THEY needed -- the soothing, the petting, the answering of unending questions about why thunder is loud and the boy next door is so mean.

We assumed that when we went back to work, there would be plenty of people to take care of our children for us, but there weren't, at least not enough who would love our kids, teach them to behave, and, oh, yes, work for what we could afford to pay them. So some of us put our careers on hold and became stay-at-home moms ourselves -- restless ones, missing our friends and the mental challenges of work we loved.

The rest of us settled for not-so-good child care, and worked (and worried) full time. We got to choose between guilt for missing teacher-parent conferences, and guilt for missing work so we could go to them. We learned to quickly decide whether to send a whining child with a temp to school anyway, or to take her to the doctor and be late for work.

Whether we stayed at home or worked for a paycheck, our lives were ruled by the clock. Get up, get clean, get the kids up, get breakfast, get a load of laundry in, get lunches ready. Check that the kids have their homework and are wearing jackets or boots or whatever the weather requires even if they ARE boys who are rolling their eyes and saying "Aw, mommmmm!" Get them to the car or school bus, then get dressed and out the door yourself, or on to the next set of household chores.

Those who stay home become chauffeurs, taking kids to soccer practice, piano lessons, doctors and dentists, the library. The rest got to do the chauffering after work, in between getting dinner on the table and listening to the events of the day.

We came to live by the calendar and the clock. Something had to give, either our sanity or the housework. We learned to not notice any dirt above our heads -- if we don't see it, we aren't responsible for cleaning it up. (When my mother came to help me take care of my baby, she washed windows and baseboards, and applied wax to my floors, which were unfamiliar with the concept. They went, and I quote, "Slurp.")

We tried to do it all-- read to them, bake cookies, make halloween costumes, arrange birthday parties, and still make time for nice cozy chats. No wonder if sometimes we turned on the TV after the kids were in bed and nodded off before the first commercial.

What got lost in the translation of motherhood over the years is the sense of spontaneity, the sense that time is elastic, and that when a kid really needs attention, he can get it because everything else on the agenda can be dropped at a moment's notice.

If ever an ad pulled at the guilt of an entire generation of women, it's this one: daughter is asking mom to do something with her, and mom explains she can't because she has to meet with a client. The little girl says, "When do I get to be a client?" The mom dumps everything and spends the day at the beach with her daughter.

That's why women of my generation and the next have done everything we could to make the workplace family-friendly. Some of us have pioneered in job-sharing and flex time. Some of us have started businesses at home (thank you, God, for computers and e-mail).

It may be that with the internet and fax machines and cell phones, we will someday get around the basic law of physics that says you can't be two places at once. If we can do conference calls while we're buying groceries, occasionally check the KidCam in our day care center while we're working, do our writing online and send it to the server while the kids are napping in the next room, maybe someday we CAN have it all. And it is entirely possible that the option of telecommuting may allow the "stay-at-home mom" to be Dad.

But for right now, for most of us, being a mom means being a master of split-second timing: I'll deliver one kid to the babysitter before I get to work, if you'll get the other kids to school before you get to work; I'll drop off the birthday cookies at school during lunch, if you'll pick up Katie at 3:30 and get her to the doctor.

My generation gave our mothers breakfast in bed. What kids these days could do is just let mom just stay there and wake up when she feels like it. I guarantee you she could use the rest.

In fact they could give her a whole day without a clock in it. Let her eat when she wants to eat, not at the time you've made lunch reservations for. Let her snuggle with the kids when she feels like it, not when the clock says it's bedtime. Let her decide on the spur of the moment to go to the zoo or have a picnic or take a walk and enjoy the flowers.

Give her just one day when she knows it's noon because the sun is overhead, and she knows it's dinnertime because the sun is getting low in the sky. Let her live for just one day with no to-do list and a lot of love. It could be the best mother's day she's ever had.

Read the rest of these columns HERE

Marylaine.com home to all my other writing