The Choice

This past weekend, I made a choice. Of all of the worthy jobs I’ve juggled – from writer to assistant, from art director to stylist, from author to teacher – mothering is the one I want to matter most. Mothering is the one I want to hold to closest, to devote time to first, to offer the bulk of my energy. But for me, that is a choice. For many, it’s not.

For many, mothering takes place around the edges. In the early mornings of daycare drop-off, on frenzied weekends of chores and family commitments and birthday parties. In the afternoons at the kitchen counter, between homework folder flipping and jelly spreading and dinner prepping and to do list tackling. In the late nights of bath time and B-I-N-G-O renditions, a quick kiss good night before we do it all over again.

This is not a post about working mothers vs. stay-at-home mothers. This is not a fence I want to build, planting my feet firmly on the side that most matches my current circumstance. The grass is the same color on both sides; patchy and mixed – mostly green, sometimes brown. It doesn’t matter.

But the heart of it does. I’ve had conversations with many different mothers, from a variety of different backgrounds. Mothers cradling their babies in African huts to sunglass-clad moms strolling their tots through Beverly Hills streets. And we all want the same thing: to do the best we can. We want our kids to grow up happy and blessed into futures that look brighter than the shadows of our collective pasts.

Where we differ, I think, is how to make that happen in a sea of mixed messages and cultural quotas. So we focus on the WAHM vs SAHM debate, or nursing vs. formula, or public school vs. homeschooling. We take stances and twist words to build beams that support the picketing posters we proudly display.

But I’ve never really been into picketing.

As a woman with a flexible working schedule, my seasons of mothering have reflected a lot of different scenarios: work-at-home mother, stay-at-home mother, working-outside-of-the-home mother, working-with-a-baby-on-my-knee-mother, etc. And here is what I know to be true, for our family:

They were all beautiful. They were all worthwhile. They were all deserving of respect and support and encouragement.

Yet the season that worked best – the one where the house moved smoothly (sort of) and the food was edible and the dishes were clean – was the one in which my heart was not divided. It’s the one where my priorities were obvious, and those priorities were with my family.

It was the season where I rocked Bee without looking at the clock to keep track of how much sleep I was missing. It was the season where I picked up Ken’s socks without resenting the mess, washed dishes with gratitude for the nutrition available to us and shut down the computer to host a rousing dance party in the kitchen.

The greatest thing, I think, about these seasons is that they’re not bound by schedules or titles or routines or paychecks. They’re available to all of us, no picket poster necessary. They’re not defined by acronyms or well-researched articles, and they’re not privy to a select, elite few.

But they are a choice. They are a choice to chop vegetables with a cheerful heart, whether shredding kale for lunch at the office or cutting carrots for a morning playdate at the park. They are a choice to share joy with our kids, whether singing in the car to the babysitter’s house, or clapping in a Kindermusik class at noon. They are a choice to give our kids the best of ourselves, bending low to kiss a skinned knee whether we’re dressed in pencil skirts or doctor’s scrubs or yoga pants or denim jumpers.

Sometimes, our life circumstances don’t offer many choices. But this mothering gig? It’s littered with choices. And Mama, I think you’re making the right one.