What it’s really like to be a working mother

‘Run the red light, run the red light,” I nearly screamed at my husband last Friday morning on the way to my daughter’s gymnastics recital. 

He didn’t listen to me and slowly and responsibly came to a stop at the intersection. 

I started tapping my finger against my leg, counting the 60 seconds that felt like 60 years, worrying I would miss my daughter’s first exercise. I cast dirty looks at my husband out of the corner of my eye.

Gil is Devarya’s stepdad and a very dedicated and wonderful father. But as the seconds dragged on, I got more and more edgy, I blurted out, “If this was your kid, you would have run the light.” 

I knew it wasn’t true, but I just wanted him to feel as guilty as I did. We were running late because a colleague had called me and asked me to help her with something just as we were walking out the door, and I had stopped to do it.

He just put his hand on my knee. Then, when the light turned green, he put his foot on the gas and dropped me off while he went to find parking.

I dashed out of the car and into the school yard. The recital had begun a few minutes before. I sat down on the concrete stairs at the edge of a group of sticky first graders. Then, I started to worry that Devarya wouldn’t see me so I moved to the back of the crowd and positioned myself dead center, standing. 

The move worked and she waved. She beamed and started to jiggle in place to the music. Later, when I took her out for ice cream to celebrate her excellent performance, she shared how my presence gave her confidence and made her so happy.

“I know that Abba was there,” she said of her biological father. “But all I really wanted was you.”

It made the mad dash to the car, the article I did not write and the report I wouldn’t get in until after Shabbat worth it just to hear those words. 

Though I also felt a pang of guilt. I would not have missed her gymnastics recital for the world; she had been practicing her handstands on every door in the house for the past month. Why would she think otherwise?

And then I remembered that two weeks prior, her older sister had a 10-minute dance spot in the end-of-the-year event that fell at exactly the same time as my briefing with former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. When the organization who brought her to Israel said I could not send another reporter instead of me, I chose to meet Haley rather than watch Netanya dance. 

My daughter had said, “It’s no big deal,” but somehow I think it was because she has mentioned it at least twice since, including in the context of, “Why are you rushing to get to Devarya’s gymnastics thing so fast? You didn’t even come to mine.” 

And there are those three days a week that I drive to Tel Aviv in my new role where I leave the house before the children even brush their teeth and I spend the drive instructing them to make lunches and did you remember you have to wear white?

Or calling my husband: “I forgot that Shai needs to bring a vegetable tray! Please help.”

Because Gil and I are an excellent team and he is a totally pragmatic, calm male problem-solver, it usually all gets done, but it’s not easy. 

In meetings, I am constantly thinking that I need to be home helping with homework or cleaning. When I am watching a movie with one of my children, I glance at my phone, the screen lighting up from every WhatsApp, feeling pressured that I am supposed to be working.

I want to be a role model for my daughters, showing them that mommies can have it all – a successful career, wonderful children, a clean house, exercise and anything else we want. And I put on an excellent show. Except for those days I have a mini-nervous breakdown and end up in my bed crying to my husband that I just can’t get it all done – so maybe I should do nothing at all.

Is it just me, I wonder, or does every working mother feel they need to be at work when they are at home and that they need to be at home when they are at work?

G is for guilty: It’s the way I feel pretty much all the time.

U is for unrivaled: Don’t mess with a working mom.

I is for insane: That’s what my friends lovingly call me when they hear I get up at 2 a.m. to try to balance it all, just like today, so I could write this column but still be on time for my first meeting.

L is for love: This is what I believe is the hallmark of us working moms. We love our children, love our spouses, love our jobs, love our lives and even if it kills us, we cannot imagine letting go of anything.

T is for time: Something of which I never seem to have enough.

Y is for yes: It’s a word I overuse. Yes, I will do that extra assignment. Yes, I will wash your black skirt, said to a 13-year-old at 10 p.m. Yes, I will be there, even if I physically cannot actually be in the conference room and the kindergarten at the same time, though maybe now it is easier because I didn’t say physically and my husband can put me on Zoom, the screen popped up real small in the corner of my computer while I deliver my presentation, so long as I remember to keep the singing children on mute.

This is what it is really like, at least for me, to be a working mom. But I wouldn’t want it any other way.