In Praise of Working Mothers

Let me just say that I'm pooped. Exhausted. Tired. Which is my usual state of being after putting in an eight and a half hour workday. I wouldn't have thought that going to full time hours would be kicking my butt in this fashion! I have been fortunate enough to be introduced back into the working world gradually over the last four years. When I had the opportunity to go full time at my current job toward the end of last summer I jumped at the chance. Benefits! Vacation! And I would only be increasing my time on the job by an hour and a half each day. Oh, yeah, I was ready. Willing. Capable. And more grateful for having been able to spend fifteen years at home with my two sons. Not that there weren't sometimes very long, absolutely exhausting days. And not that I didn't work. I just didn't happen to earn a paycheck for being a cook, caregiver, chauffeur, housekeeper, accountant, procurement officer, scheduler, laundress and general domestic goddess. I was able to spend a great deal of time in my sons' elementary school classrooms. I put in some time volunteering for Public Broadcasting and Habitat for Humanity. I had the luxury of putting time into writing my first novel. All good, worthy, and worthwhile ways to spend that time. But since I have been putting in often forty-plus hours a week over this last winter I have a new appreciation for the women who put in the second shift every day. I don't know how they manage it, particularly if they have small children. Most evenings I have the energy to get supper together for myself and my son, read through two newspapers and usually accomplish some small domestic task. But most of the housework gets put off until the weekend. And then I am generally successful at rationalizing doing something much more fun than vacuuming and scrubbing bathrooms. So my metaphorical hat is off to all of the working mothers who find a way to do it all, or at least make it appear that they are. And that includes my own mother, who made it look much easier than it likely ever was.