I am lucky that I have two really wonderful part-time positions which together just about equal my former full-time salary
The world of work, for me, is a patched-together affair. Like a quilt, I provide comfort and care.
Chris yesterday at our block party.
Although I work a lot, I still need time to care for the family. Chris’s Parkinson’s impinges on his life and our family in small ways. While he is still capable of doing most of his own daily tasks, increasingly, over the years, there are ways the kids and I have had to pitch in — provide small services like helping him to stand after seated a long time or reminding him to take his pills.
Me and Char at our block party. We chatted with our neighbors and local politicians.
Beyond paid work and caring for family work, I need time for self-care — work on my novel, my essays. Or simply read my book for book club. Or prepare a nice dinner party or plan some fabulous trip. (I have absolutely no upcoming trip and this always unnerves me — when am I going to go where?)
I rarely see a story of my patched-together work-life balance in popular culture. Although today’s cover article in the New York Times Sunday Review talks about “A Toxic Work World” where only the young, childless can survive. I agree. While society has changed, our expectations at work have not. Our work life is no longer Mad Men and our family life is no longer Fathers Know Best. I more identify with Frankie in ABC’s The Middle — overworked, struggling, but still, funny, hopeful.
Unlike Frankie, I am an intellectual too — a middle-aged writer, teacher, editor, just trying to keep it together — offering love and friendship and trying to make a very real positive impact on my world.
“We would think managing kids matters just as much as managing money,” Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of the Times article says. “We can, all of us, stand up for care. Until we do, men and women will never be seen as equal; not while both are responsible for providing cash but only women are responsible for providing care.”
I want to believe politicians are talking about this too. After all, Hilllary Rodham Clinton wrote the book, a million years ago, called, It Takes a Village. A cynical culture may refer to the title sarcastically or see the treatise only politically, but I see it as a reminder — none of us do it alone. Even geniuses, like the Beatles or Mother Theresa or Einstein, drew upon the wisdom and received help from their communities.
I snapped this pic from my bike ride to work the other day. Riverside Park.
I believe we are due for a cultural shift. And this may be the message of the pope when he flies through town this week. Caring for each other is way more important than competing against each other. I want to be a part of a culture of caring. Utopian? Let’s try it.
Like the song from South Pacific says, “If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true? Happy talk. Happy talk.”
We were having the last weekend of summer at Long Beach Island in New Jersey – me and my b.f.f. Joanne.
We’d become fast friends 17 years ago — when we’d both wheeled newborns through the lobby of our Upper West Side building. We admired each other’s carriages. She was impressed by my antique English pram. I liked hers — sleek and modern. We discovered our husbands had the same name, John, and both were character-type actors. And, of course, we both had newborn babies.
This last day of summer, we sizzled on the beach with our teenagers, gossiping about old neighbors and new careers. Jo has returned to the workforce full tilt as a fashion designer, while my career, freelance writing and teaching, limps along.
From the beach, we watched a parasail glide past us.
Jo adjusted her stylish straw hat and told me, “I’ve been promising Little E for years that she could try it. But, no pressure, we don’t have to do it…. If you think it’s too expensive.” Which I did. And which she did too.
But see, we are two ladies who don’t want life to beat us. And this last year, life has nearly beaten us.
Our tough year is due to our declining marriages. My husband’s Parkinson’s Disease is worsening and her marriage is devolving. But we are resilient. Jo’s daughters called her JSJ, Just Single Joanne.
I reached for my phone in my whicker beach bag and called the number advertised on the parasail.
By now, the girls had perked up on their towels. “Can we do it? Mom? Please!”
“It’s a definite maybe,” I said.
“Oh, like the carriage ride?” See, for my girls’ 8th birthday, I’d promised the twins a carriage ride in Central Park. They are now 14 and still waiting. I’m ambivalent. What about the whole carriage horse and anti-cruelty thing? Besides, it is expensive.
And so, I discovered when I called from the beach, is parasailing.
“$75 a person,” I reported.
“Girls, I don’t know. That’s $225.” Jo said.
“No. That’s practically a trip to Florida in February,” I said.
“The carriage ride!” they said.
I waffled. “Look,” I said “if the conditions are all right, then we can do it. Sunny day, light breeze, calm water. We’ll see.”
One of my daughters said to Jo’s daughter, “We’re never going to do it. She’s been promising us a carriage ride in Central Park for six years.”
“My mom’s the same. She’s been promising me a parasail for so many summers,” Little E. responded.
I ignored them. I turned to Jo, “Wait. You said, $225. But it’s only $150. Two girls at $75 each?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m going to do it too. It looks fun. You and I can do it together.”
“I guess.” I shrugged. I am scared of heights. I don’t like ferris wheels. But it didn’t matter. I’d bought us time. The next day, I knew the forecast was for rain.
***
I woke before everyone else and looked out the window. Not a cloud in the sky. In fact, the conditions were perfect. Sunny day, light breeze, calm water.
Jo made us coffee. “I think we should do it.”
“Okay,” I exhaled. “Yolo. Carpe Diem. All that crap.”
The girls were thrilled.
At the shack on the Barnegat Light dock, I signed waivers on an ipad, not even reading the print. I had to rush to the bathroom.
We boarded the cushy white boat. The guide and the driver were 20-something year olds. Did they know about keeping me safe, synching cords?
We watched the shore get smaller.
When our boat was well out, Sean, the ex-Marine guide, asked, “Who wants to go first?”
“We do,” I said, answering for Jo and me. I wanted the whole thing over with.
“Okay.” He bent to slip one nylon strap over and under our thighs and another around our waists.
I whispered to him, “Basically, Sean, we two are single mothers so you cannot let anything happen to us. I’m not kidding. You have to make sure you bring us down alive.”
“That’s the idea,” he said. “We haven’t lost one yet.”
He sat us on the back of the boat. I looked around for the metal basket. Wouldn’t we be sitting in a metal frame like on a ferris wheel? No, the two straps of nylon were pretty much our whole seat and harness. I don’t know if it was uncomfortable. I had no time to think or feel because, with a whoosh, a gunning of the motor, we were jettisoned from the boat into the sky. We were suddenly miles away, it seemed.
Dreamlike, boats far below us left a trail of foam – V’s no bigger than a letter on a printed page.
“Oh, this is so fun.” Jo laughed, giddy, girlish, giggling. I recall a few moments in the sky where I was not utterly terrified.
I pushed my big sunglasses up my nose, looked at the beach houses, boats. Everything was tiny. Nothing mattered.
So quiet. I turned and looked up at the parasail behind us — full and reliable.
I noticed I was white knuckling it. My hands were clutching the straps. I told myself, Relax. Enjoy this. It will soon be over. I circled my wrists. The boat slowed, lowered us so we dipped our feet in the water. Then, we were raised up into the sky again. We laughed and shouted.
We waved at the girls.
“They’ve probably forgotten us,” Jo said.
But we could make out their tiny waves in the tiny boat.
After about 15 minutes, we were lowered back gently into the white boat. Behind my big sunglasses, I cried. I was so grateful to have survived. I had returned. Safety. I thanked Sean. I told the girls it was fun.
I watched my girls go up, kicking each other, swinging, waving, going no-handed. I felt a similar wide relief when my girls returned to the boat safely.
For a little while, that day, up high in the sky, life was light, someone else was driving. Everything – work, husband, money problems — was far away. I realized I didn’t need to clutch so tightly. I had been scared to let go. But it was okay when I did.
Maybe a carriage ride in Central Park will feel the same way.
Here we are sailing up.
I am part of a variety show this afternoon and I am going to read this essay. I’ve tried to sell it to a couple of magazines, but, sadly, no takers.
What happens to your son’s favorite spot on the couch when he goes to college? Nature abhors a vacuum. Someone else plops down there.
Mila Kunis is Jupiter.
On Friday night it was me. Chris, Cate and I were watching Jupiter Ascending, which, incidentally, has a theme about seeking and punishing the mother of adult children. Never mind that. During one of the intergalactic battle scenes, my mind wandered. The thought occurred to me — as it does on every weekend night — Where is Hayden? When will he be home? (And will he surpass his curfew (again)?)
The remembering was not unlike the time he was in the old-fashioned pram on the side porch at Skenewood, the big family house in the Adirondacks. Hayden was an infant asleep for his afternoon nap. I went to the kitchen, made myself a roast beef sandwich, sat at the table, and wondered, What am I forgetting?
Oh! The baby on the side porch!
You forget that person you love for a minute. Then you remember them more deeply. Rushing back to the pram, he was fine, sleeping soundly.
My 18-year old assures me he now is sleeping well, despite the area heat wave and his lack of air conditioning in the dorm room. Yes, I’ve talked to him twice and written him a card too since we dropped him off on Wednesday.
My heart has an invisible string connected to my son. This heartstring travels across states, time zones, and galaxies. Just like the evil queen from Jupiter Ascending, who wasn’t actually evil at all, she was just very lonely and wanted to do the right thing. Or possibly, she wanted to live forever and stay young through her attachment to her children. I’m not sure.
It was a cheesy film, but his spot on the couch was pretty sweet.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 