A Mother’s Work is Everything

No matter my job title, I always default to Mom.

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

My index finger runs along the stitching on the arm of the sofa. My husband blurs in my periphery. I blink, and tears roll down my cheeks, soaking into the blanket I’ve wrapped around myself. Worn leather stretches between us in a gulf so wide we might as well be on opposite sides of the world.

The kids are down for the night. This is supposed to be our time. We should be watching TV — Ninja Warrior or Top Chef or The Big Lebowski for the hundredth time — maybe sharing a glass of wine.

Tonight, I stare straight ahead at the black screen and silently break in half. My children pull me in one direction; my job in the other. I must choose or be torn apart.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

My first day is tomorrow, and we have been ghosted by the babysitter who has been watching our kids for two weeks as we prepare for this transition. I woke up this morning confident and relaxed. Now, my shoulders and my stomach are tied together in one big knot.

My worst fear, I’ve just told him, is that I will have to renege on my acceptance, forced against my will to stay home, day after day, until the baby’s in school. Two years from now, maybe three.

His gentle reply: “Maybe now’s just not the right time.”

And I blink out the tears, breathing deeply so he won’t hear the jagged edges of the sobs I’m suppressing. Rage sweeps through my veins and it’s only because of the effort it took to get three children to sleep at a reasonable time that I don’t explode ten years of frustration all over the room, weaponizing against my dear husband this desperate sense of unfairness that threatens to break me in two.

I can feel him watching me; he’s patient as I compose myself.

When I trust myself to speak again, I can only manage, “It’s never the right time.”

I could fill an encyclopedia with all the things I never knew about being a mother.

I was not aware that all my sentences — my very thoughts — would remain unfinished in perpetuity, or that half my life would be spent moving other people’s things from one place to another. I didn’t expect the late nights spent hunched over a laptop or hardcover book, making myself an expert on everything from child psychology to the concentration of contaminants in the local water supply. Nor did I realize that I would feel eternally incompetent, not knowing the impact of my decisions until sometimes years later (if ever), living in constant fear that each effort to protect my children is a nudge in the wrong direction.

These things fade into the background, though. It’s fair that I have to deal with the existential fact of the humans I chose to bring into this world.

What’s not fair — the noose that continues tightening around my neck as I sit on the sofa, unable to look my husband in the face — is the tooth-and-nail battle I have to fight just to do what he gets to do every day without a second thought.

No one would suggest his career should wait.

I never meant to be a stay-at-home mom. It wasn’t part of the plan. I would have a baby, be out for a few months, and then go back to work until I had another baby.

But then I had a baby who needed me — me and nobody else. A baby who, despite my best efforts and all the advice the internet had to offer, simply would not stay with anyone but me. A baby who was fired from daycares, who would scream for every single minute of her time with a sitter, be it minutes or hours, calming only when she was back in my arms.

So I quit.

One October day, as the leaves changed from green to orange to brown outside my window, as my first child’s wails surged down the hallway, I called my boss, and I quit. I left my job and abandoned my career and became fully immersed in the work of a mother.

And in all the years since then, as I’ve waited for the right time, I have become the default.

The default schedule keeper, meeting attendee, and appointment maker. The default summer program researcher, phone call maker, and symptom checker. The one who will sleep on the kids’ floor when they’ve got a stomach bug, bucket at the ready, in case of midnight puke. The one whose name follows her down the hallway no matter how lightly she tries to tread, seeking a few minutes of solitude to read a few pages, check an email, or just go poop.

I schedule my appointments and my workouts around when I can find someone to take my kids, and when I need to do anything that requires focus (such as writing) I have to do it while the baby is napping and the other kids are otherwise occupied.

I know what time the school bus comes, which kid is in which activity, who the positive influences at school are. I know what brand of apple juice they like and which frozen chicken strips they hate. I plan the birthday parties and schedule the playdates and buy the presents. I know what sizes they wear and whose laundry was last washed.

I am the default.

I’ve taken jobs over the years, anywhere from two to sixty hours per week. And every time, the arc is the same.

I accept an exciting offer and immediately get started — not on the work of the job, but on preparing my family for the fact of my having a job. I post ads for babysitters, conduct interviews, and deal with payment (which eats up most of my salary). I get the lunchboxes ready, check the homework and pack the backpacks. I text while I’m away. Do the kids have all their school supplies? Is the baby crying too much? Eating too little? When there’s an issue with one of the children, or with the babysitter, I leave and come home.

My job gets done in my absence, by someone who has their own responsibilities, and that doesn’t feel fair either.

I exercise less, my diet gets worse, and things start to crumble. The kids miss appointments. I forget to pay the gymnastics fee. Dinner is a wreck because I didn’t meal plan this week.

I end up exhausted, and everyone else ends up unhappy.

And then, eventually, we reach an inflection point.

“I would be happy to stay at home with the kids,” my husband reminds me. But we know that’s an idle thought. While I’ve been the default caregiver, his career has progressed, further widening the expansive gap between our salaries.

The practical thing is for me to stay home.

In a few years, we say. When things slow down. It’s just not the right time.

I sit here on the cold, overstuffed sofa, feeling the heat in my cheeks and licking the salt from my upper lip.

It feels inconvenient and selfish for me to need this. Ridiculous for me to want a job with everything else that’s going on. But why? It’s not ridiculous for my husband to have a job. It’s not inconvenient for him to make appointments whenever he wants or selfish for him to set aside time for exercise.

But I know why.

It’s because I’m the mother. That work has become the core of who I am. It is expected of me. Anything else, regardless of how much it invigorates me and stimulates my mind and makes me feel like a whole person, is the outer layer. First to fall off when my fingers get tired from clutching it so tightly. Easily cast aside when it’s not the right time.

But not today.

I tighten my grip and turn toward my husband. “We are going to figure it out,” I say. “And I need your help.”

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