Something Important
“Hey Mom”, Norah asked as we sat at the table – one of us coloring and the other meal planning. It was a rare Sunday afternoon when the apartment was quiet while Conor took an extra long nap and Brett went for an extra long run, allowing for slow, uninterrupted conversations with my first grader. “I have a question for you. When I’m a mom someday, what if I want to have a job but I also don’t want to hire a nanny? What do I do with my kids?”
Apparently Norah wanted to bypass a couple decades of tough conversations and jump right into the mom guilt arena.
“Well, I had a job before you were born. I loved being a teacher, but when you were born I decided I wanted to stay home with you for a while instead. I’m still a teacher though, I’m just not working right now. So you could take a break like that. Or maybe the person you marry will work at different times than you – like one of you will work in the evenings and the other during the day. You have lots of time to figure out the logistics of your childcare plans and your career dreams, Norah.”
“Oh, that’s great. Because my husband is going to be a rock star and I’m going to be a ballerina so we’ll probably be working at different times. Thanks Mom.”
“Perfect plan, Nor,” I said through a stifled giggle. She went back to coloring but I couldn’t focus on meal planning any longer. I was too busy wondering whether or not my six-year-old saw my job as a stay-at-home mom as important.
***
I am taking a writing course right now and one of the assignments was to read an essay by Jeanne Murray Walker called “Alice Munroe: A Quiet Grace”. In the essay Ms. Walker writes about raising her daughter while working on her dissertation for her PhD. She talks about untangling paragraphs and peeling potatoes and taking her daughter to the park and how as a mother and a writer, she’s doing all of those things all of the time. She also talks about how reading essays by Alice Munroe helps her see how it’s possible to do all of those things all of the time.
There was one line in particular that felt as if Ms. Murray crawled inside my heart and shone a light on the exact point I struggle with in this.
I was mad with the need to Do Something Important. Not that I was sure of what to do.
***
One of the first questions people ask in this city is, “What brought you here?” because almost no one who lives here actually grew up here.
The quick answer is, “My husband’s job.” It’s not a lie, but it’s not the full truth either.
The truth is that I wanted to move here to pursue a doctorate at Columbia’s Teachers College. I traveled here in 2010 for an education workshop and started dreaming about living on the Upper West Side and commuting to the beautiful campus each day to study and maybe even write books about literacy and best practices. For the next four years I asked Brett every couple of months if he would be willing to move to NYC when he was done with his medical training. He always said yes.
By the time he was finished I had stopped teaching to stay home with Norah and the dream of a doctorate had been buried beneath swaddle blankets and board books. But when a job in NYC caught Brett’s eye, it reminded us both of my dream and reignited that desire in me ever so slightly. Maybe this is something I can do. As soon as he was offered the job, I pulled out all of the information I had collected on the program and started plotting on a calendar and in our budget how we could make it work for me to go back to school.
After we had been in NYC for a few months it was finally time to attend a meeting with an admissions counselor at Columbia. Brett took Norah to a playground to give me some space to organize all of my information. I had all of the papers ready and organized on the table in front of me, the test date on the calendar, the questions written down to ask the admissions counselor– and I felt glued to my chair at home. It sounds weird, but I physically could not stand up from the table. Panic rose in my throat as I slowly realized that I kept telling people I wanted to get my doctorate so I could teach and write, but I didn’t actually want to write about education -- that’s just all I really knew at that point. I just wanted to write and a PhD in education wasn’t going to help me with that. The only thing it would accomplish would be Something Important hanging on my wall.
I nervously called Brett to tell him I wasn’t going to go to the open house. What would he think? I had been asking him for four years to upend our life on the west coast and move to New York City so I could do this. And he did without hesitation.
His answer was filled with grace, and made me realize that my husband might know the desires of my heart even better than I do. “Okay! That’s totally fine. Come meet us at the playground.”
Here’s the truth – I only wanted to pursue a doctorate to prove that I could. It was an ego thing, not a calling.
***
Norah and I have been reading a book about a girl growing up in the 1950s. In the story, two of her mom’s friends are coming to visit and the girl finds out they all met when they worked together and her mom was a manager. Now her mother’s friends have fancy jobs in New York City and her mom is home raising six children in Florida.
Maryellen was stunned. She had never realized that Mom had such an important job! And now Mom just stayed home and made life organized and smooth and pleasant for their family.
I read those words and took a peek over at Norah. What was she thinking about these dynamics?
“Are you sorry you’re not working now Mom?”, Maryellen asked.
“Ellie, my dear,” said Mom, “managing you kids is harder work than managing the assembly line.”
Yes and amen, Maryellen’s mom!
“Nothing is forever, maybe I’ll go back to work someday.”
“But what would you do?”
At this point, I feel like Maryellen is talking to me. I ask Norah if she thinks Maryellen’s mom is happy and she smiles big and gives me a thumbs up.
A few pages later Maryellen is talking to one of her siblings about her conversation.
“I’m thinking about Mom and what her life was like when she had a job during the war. Guess what? It turns out Mom was important!”
***
Norah is no longer asking me about her future child care plans. She’s seven now and has moved on to something I know even less about -- Star Wars.
Until the last few months, I had never seen a Star Wars movie. Sci-fi has never been my Something Important.
Then coronavirus shooed everyone inside. I did not know that Norah had slowly been indoctrinated to the Star Wars world from a few friends at school. I mean, I guess there are worse things they could have been talking about. I did not know that Brett had seen most of the movies and was wanting to see the newer ones with someone who would actually be interested in them. What I really didn’t know is how much both of them wanted my company as they went through every single Star Wars movie.
They lured my reluctant feet to the living room with pizza and a promise of ice cream during the second half. We started with number four, which was the first one made but starts right in the middle of the storyline, leaving me immediately frustrated. I tried really hard to be interested but I just didn’t care. Apparently, they didn’t care about my lack of interest because they eagerly invited me to join them the following week for number 5. I told them no, that this was a great time for them to do something together so I could have some uninterrupted writing time. They watched 5 and 6, then 1, 2, and 3 over the course of the next few weeks while I popped in and out when I needed to walk a sentence out from being stuck.
When they finally got to number 7, I was summoned once again.
“Mom, Rae is in these ones. You know who she is right?”
I stared blankly at my daughter.
“Mom! She’s on Rhea’s backpack! You see her every day when you pick me up from school!”
“Oh! Of course I know who Rae is.” Lying as a parent in these cases is totally permissible.
“You HAVE to watch with us!”
I HAVE to write, I want to say. I have to get back to doing Something Important.
But in that moment I couldn’t tell her that my Something Important was more important than hers. So I joined them. As the seventh movie started, I realized that the strong, brave character at the center of this story was a woman. I have to admit, Rae is pretty badass. And the acting had drastically improved from the first (or fourth) movie.
I settled in with my pizza and ice cream and watched as my husband helped my daughter connect the story lines and talked about how awesome this new character was.
My daughter has taken it upon herself to catch me up on all of the movies I missed out on. Somehow I must have given the impression that I was really disappointed about my writing time taking away from Star Wars viewing. At least five times a day she asks, “Mom, do you have any questions about Star Wars?”
I really don’t. As much as the seventh movie was an improvement in my opinion, I still just don’t really care about Star Wars.
But I do care about my daughter. And I recently heard some parenting advice I’m trying hard to follow.
Love whatever it is your kid loves. Get into it. Show them you’re interested even if you have to fake it the entire time. It’s a way to get them talking and show them that you will be there for whatever they need to talk about when the topic is deeper and more personal than Star Wars. (My own example. I think the advice giver was taking Pokemon 101. Maybe I don’t have it so bad after all.)
One of the top searches on my phone in the last month is “Star Wars Trivia”. Right now, her Something Important is Star Wars. Mine is writing, but it’s also -- always -- her. So I’m figuring out how to hold our Somethings Important together, which is why I am somehow weaving Star Wars into my writing.
***
A few months before the city shut down, I went to a coffee shop just a few blocks from where Norah was having a play date with a friend. It also happens to be just a few blocks from Columbia, and it was a relief to not feel the pull to go wander that campus and start dreaming again. When I dropped Norah off I told her I would be there for a couple hours and then pick her up.
“Okay. So you’ll be doing your job,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Your job. You’re a writer. So you’ll be writing at the coffee shop right?”
I smiled. “Yes, Norah. I’ll be writing.”
It’s my Something Important. And so is she.