This week my eldest turned 16. How did that happen? How did that little babe with the giant eyes and owlish eyebrows from birth become tall and loud and crazy smart and funny and insecure and self-confident and more all at once? How did I go from being in my early thirties wondering whether I’d enjoy giving myself over to parenthood to in my late forties having done so?
Anyone can tell you that raising children is really hard work. As work goes, it’s an illogical choice: no pay, endless hours, and zip vacation time. It’s not a job, though. Raising children is a lot of work, but the work goes into creating relationships.
This is why the whole work/life balance frame does not particularly help parents figure out their lives. In a way, choosing balance implies that you can control how much time or energy family takes. And you can’t, not exactly.
But, some months ago it struck me that while I’ve been writing through most of my parenting life, and wanted to think I was a work-from-home mama, it was more truthful to say I’d been mama at home, also working. The realization occurred in the most mundane way: I got to “skip” a snow day for the first time in a kazillion years. I’ve written about this on a brand-new ta-da first ever for me ebook entitled Welcome to My World. I am not the only person contemplating work and life imbalances or family and work as equations; I’m looking forward to reading other mamas’ experiences on this subject. I hope that my Standing in the Shadows’ readers will e-read along.
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What about that 16-year-old? He really is a spectacular guy.
