Admittedly, I’m way behind on blog postings… and I’ve honestly had lots of inspiring little moments, all captured (as many things are in my hectic life)with green children’s marker on the back of a piece of junk mail which is buried (I hope) somewhere in my pile of important things I need to get to. But I haven’t had any time to get to any of it.
In fact, they have stopped delivering a newspaper to my door. Typically, this would cause me to call and report a delivery error – but I’m procrastinating because I have a fear that there is a bill for said newspapers also buried deep in my pile of important things to do, and it is not a mistake that one of my favorite indulgences is no longer in my driveway each morning.
Such is the life of a mom this time of year. It’s a little sexist to exclude the dads… but generally speaking, I find it is us women who have volunteered to bake a couple dozen cookies for the teachers at school, cut out extra crafts for the holiday party, and bring in unused coats and food for the coat and food drive. We are also planning to help our kids celebrate by baking extra at home, decorating the house, attending every little school performance and party, and digging up old Christmas DVDs and music. And I haven’t even mentioned gift planning, shopping, and wrapping or addressing holiday cards.
Wow. And all this on top of our other responsibilities. As I sat down at the computer and calculated how long it had been since I blogged, I thought about how all of us are in the holiday crunch this time of year. Some of us add on the responsibilities to a very busy work day at the office, others of us, to a very busy work day at home.
And I think about the Mommy Wars. These “wars” are something I have never particularly understood or felt a part of. Maybe it’s because my choice to stay at home wasn’t an easy one to make, or one that I think I’ll stick with forever. I know how hard those of us who work at home work, and how much personal sacrifice it entails. And I could turn around and say the exact same thing about those moms I know who work “at work”.
Our recent move to the Silicon Valley has been a little eye opening actually when it comes to the “mommy wars”. Even in Los Angeles, most moms seemed to fit pretty neatly into one of the two armies at war… but not here. Here, a truce seems to have been called. In the extremely progressive Bay Area, I hardly know any moms at home who don’t dabble in a professional environment too. What a lucky position for these moms to be in. Rather than look upon anyone working disparagingly (as the mommy war would encourage me to) – I look upon these women enviously. Somehow, they have managed to straddle both worlds, part time in each, engaged at home on a daily basis with their children, and intellectually and professionally stimulated as well. They aren’t the moms of our mother’s generation who worked full time and still felt the responsibility to do it all at home. There are many of these women who have genuinely found a reasonable part time commitment to both – aided in large part by the greater flexibility and progressive stance offered by many of the internet companies located here. Of course, this is how I envision it. They might describe it differently.
Nonetheless, I feel sorry for the rest of us, who have had to choose one over the other – and especially for some of us for whom the “choice” was one of necessity not options. Being a mom isn’t easy – especially this time of year. Making choices that somehow automatically assign you a role in some sort of war isn’t something most of us signed up for when we made our “choice”. And who has time for such a debate anyway? Not me. There are too many things in my pile waiting to get done!
This holiday season, when I’m behind on enough things already… I look upon each mom I see out there with a smile. Being a mom is a sisterhood really, and whichever side of the war you’re on, you’re a part of it. We’re all just trying to get it all done, and find some time to sit by the fire and celebrate the holidays with the ones we love. It’s time for peace in the mommy wars… and there’s no better time to recognize it than this holiday season.
