Shut It Off

Big A and I before H's arrival.

July 2008

“The television is ruining us,” I said to Big A last week.

Big A travels a lot for work, selling the reputation of a large Boston-based financial services company. One week he’s off to San Antonio, Texas, for a golf tournament, and the next he’s hanging out in the officer’s club at Miramar in San Diego, California.

I often imagine his luxurious lifestyle on the road: fancy hotels, long dinners with cocktails and red wine, stimulating adult conversations and upgrades to first class plane seats.

But, in reality, he spends less than six hours each night in the hotel room – never long enough to enjoy that firm mattress with the fluffy down comforter. He eats hotel conference food, which is usually overcooked chicken and limp green beans, served with cheap wine that guarantees an instant hangover. His flights never seem to take off or land when they are supposed to.

When I hear the front stairs creak under his Johnston & Murphys upon return, I am expecting Big A to open the front door refreshed from his brief sojourn. I imagine him taking me into his arms and delivering a dramatic, Breakfast at Tiffany's-style kiss.

Instead, he drops his bags in the front hall and collapses into the worn leather armchair in front of the television in the living room.

H runs across the apartment in his footie pajamas to jump into his lap, drooling kisses over his five-o’clock shadowed face. When I lean in to kiss him, I can smell a day’s worth of rushing to get someplace on time.

Once H is tucked into crib, we dish out some dinner and head to the living room to zone out while we eat. Other than an occasional chuckle from a Seinfeld episode we’ve already watched at least twice before, forks and knifes scraping along our plates are the only audible sounds.

After we clean up, carefully loading the dishwasher without too much clinking – the kitchen is precariously situated outside H’s bedroom – Big A heads back to the TV. He clicks through the channels, switching from docu-dramas about stranded loggers or crab fishermen with sailor mouths. While his eyes stare at the screen, I can tell his worries are flashing beneath his surface.

Since Harrison was born – and I turned in the security of a weekly paycheck – Big A has shouldered most of our financial burdens. My freelance writing business covers the food shopping, electric, heating, phone and cable bills. His paycheck is heading straight to rent, paying down credit card debts and savings for a house we’d like to own someday – preferably before we add any more children to the fold.

In the last month, nearly 100 employees were laid off from his company. The dream job he accepted in February was eliminated, but his boss finagled him another position. No one has defined his new role yet, or what his salary will look like. He’s leaving behind the client relationships he’s built over the weeks away from home in the last nine months. And now, he will be hitting the road again to forge new relationships.

I watch from the couch as Big A’s concerns churn while he clicks through the channels. I want him to talk to me so I can carry a bag or two of his worries. But, he doesn’t realize I am staring at him, pleading with my eyes for him to speak.

So last week, I demanded he shut the TV off. He pressed mute.

I understand the need to unwind and be brainless after working all day. But we have to do a better job of re-connecting when the day is over. That clicker and screen are stifling our conversations.

After a minute of silence, he said, “Tomorrow, dinner at the kitchen table.”

Agreed. And I shuffled over to my laptop, as he turned up the volume on a woodworking show.

Big Hug

(Apple picking with H, October 2010)

“Baby seals,” he coos. “Funny!” It’s 5am and my 19-month old son – H – is chattering from his crib.

There’s no soothing him back to sleep, no quick pop of the binky to send him back to bed.

My eyelids unfurl like spring leaves, allowing my eyes to adjust to the empty spot on the other side of the bed. Thousands of miles away my husband – Big A – is still snoozing in a king-sized hotel bed in Birmingham, Alabama. An iPod will ease him into the morning. He will shower in a pristine white tub and dry off with fluffy white towels. While watching the last night’s sports scores flash across a high-def TV screen, Big A will tuck his pressed shirt into his flat-front suit pants and pack a briefcase. On deck for this morning: A business meeting over muffins and freshly brewed coffee at a local bakery. Big A has been gone for four days – Florida, Texas and Alabama.

I shuffle to our bureau to swap out my pajamas. Holding up a shirt crusted with H’s graham-cracker drool from yesterday, I slide it over my head and pull on my black yoga pants. I brush my teeth and as I wipe my mouth, I realize the towel has soured overnight – one too many hands dried.

I cruise into the kitchen, dumping yesterday’s stale coffee and reloading the pot. Sippy cup of milk in hand, I creak open H’s door.

“Big hug,” he calls out, arms wide open. I sing, “Good morning, bubby!”

Today will be variations on yesterday: eating, playing, napping, running errands and cleaning H’s endless trail of crumbs, park sand and toys.

But there will be moments I want to capture like fireflies in a glass jar: the way H raises his eyebrows, his face splattered with black cookie crumbs, and asks for another Oreo; how he reaches up to hold my hand as he climbs our front stairs; the scent of his neck, damp with tears, as we hug away a boo-boo.

But four days into Big A’s sojourn from our family life, single motherhood has worn at my patience. When H squirms like a captured alligator during his diaper change, I fight the urge to pin his legs down. I want to snarl, “Not again!” as he drops green peas to a happy roll across the kitchen floor.

Bedtime. I exhale, closing H’s door as he sings himself to sleep.

Big A is due home tonight at 10. Each time I look at the clock, I re-calculate how many hours until he walks through the door. I check his flight status, willing the plane to go faster, pleading for no delays.

Tomorrow, we will wake up to the sounds of a creaking crib under H’s jumping feet and the refrain of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.”

Big A will get up, make the coffee and deliver the sippy cup.

I will dream an extra hour, shower and shave my legs, apply some eye make-up and blush. As Big A and H build a tower of wooden blocks, I will sneak out of the house and head to the supermarket alone, where I have time to caress plums and peruse apples. I will stop for a coffee on the way home and sip it in silence in the parking lot.

And when I come home, weighed down by bags of groceries, I will drop everything and open my arms when H calls out, “Big hug!”

Cost of Motherhood

(Harrison at 6 weeks old, April 2009)

Six weeks after I delivered our son, my husband and I had the “talk” – not the one about when we would have sex again – the one about what we were going to do with Harrison once my maternity leave was over. If both of us worked, almost an entire salary would be devoted to childcare.

We had to choose who was going to stay home.

At the time, I was making slightly more than my husband, who had taken a step back in his career to change directions. I had worked for a Boston-based financial firm for more than 10 years, netting out to six promotions, dozens of raises and bonuses, an office with a window overlooking the financial district and several pairs ornately decorated shoes to glam up my work uniform of dark skirt suits.

My husband was quick to offer his stay-at-home-dad services. But I hesitated. Yes, my post-pregnancy hormones had me crying at the thought of leaving my son longer than an hour. But, I also had a hunch about my future reality in the workforce.

The only women in vice president or higher roles in my office were those without spouses or children. Graying middle-aged men filled the upper management spots. With a baby in my arms, I wasn’t seeing much hope for a long, profitable career to support a family of three.

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office backed my suspicions. Women are still lagging behind in holding management positions. We are making less than our male counterparts. And even worse, mothers in management roles are paid even less than women without kids in the same job.

The bottom line is simple: despite an increasingly level playing ground, women are not considered equal to men in the workplace. Each gender may have their own bathrooms – and mothers may be permitted to pump breast milk at the office – but at the end of the workweek, his paycheck is greater than hers.

When I gave my notice, my voice cracked. And before handed in my security badge, I glanced longingly at the photo that had been snapped of the 22-year old version of myself.

When I graduated from college, I thought that while barriers to my corporate success may exist, if I worked hard enough, I could surpass them. Studying the women’s liberation movement and being the daughter of a young, hard-working office assistant/part-time hippie taught me that.

What I underestimated though was that I was stepping into a workforce that – over the long term – valued my male co-workers more than me.

However, that fact became glaringly obvious as when I looked at the raw salary predictions for my husband and me. I worked in Corporate Communications as a writer; he was in sales – a male-dominated career – for a large mutual fund company. I was at the top of my pay grade; he was at the bottom of his. While my salary was higher today, it probably wasn’t going to increase much more.

Even if I didn’t have a baby, government-sponsored study after study has led me to believe I’m destined to make less than my male co-workers no matter how hard I work.

Women are making less money because we are still primary caretakers at home. Trying to integrate a family into a career means working less hours, being distracted when day care or nanny is calling about your barfing baby and – when your child care is not calling – wondering why you are at work and not at the park with your quickly growing child. All of this equals less pay.

As I write this today in 2010, it seems so ridiculous: My husband – by virtue of his gender and societal norms – has a greater potential to make more money in his career than I do. We have a better chance of owning a house one day, giving Harrison the opportunity to take music lessons and play on a soccer team, and taking a yearly family vacation with my husband keeping his feet planted in the corporate world.

Our decision ended up not being a choice at all. We fell squarely into the gender stereotypes that the report’s statistics re-inforce: a man’s work is monetarily worth more than a woman’s.

Get a blog!

(Reading with Harrison, January 2010)

Most nights, my husband and I settle into our evening ritual. After our 18-month old baby has gone to sleep and the dinner dishes are drying, he takes command of our only remote and flips through the channels. I curl up on the couch opposite his chair and reach out into the blogosphere.

While Aaron is certainly an amazing husband and father, who listens carefully as I detail the giggles, meltdowns and massive poops that dominate my day with our son, it is to these bloggers I turn for amusement, camaraderie and information.

Since leaving my full-time job to be a full-time mother, my real world has become increasingly small. I used to read blogs as a brief escape from my desk job, but I had plenty of personal interaction with co-workers and friends. Now, as I’ve tailor my days to accommodate naps, meals and playtimes, blogs increasingly have become my lifeline to the outside world. I’ve realized babies aren’t really conducive to a healthy dose of daily adult interaction.

Stating this makes me a touch sad…. Before the Internet and blogs, people were more likely to talk to each other – at the supermarket, at the park, at the library. I remember my own mother being social in the checkout line at market. I met my first group of girlfriends when I was three years old because our respective mothers became friends at the library playgroup. Now, I watch as many mothers furiously tap on their handhelds, while pushing a stroller or oftentimes ignoring a screaming child, never mind interacting with me. I’m just as much at fault here. Eye contact can be much harder than enduring BlackBerry thumb.

So while blogs are being blamed for the demise of traditional journalism (i.e., newspapers, network news, cable news networks, etc.), it’s the demise of human interaction that is more unsettling to me. Instead of discussing in person, picking up the phone or, God forbid, writing a letter, more and more people are blogging about their experiences and throwing them out into the world for anyone to read – doesn’t matter if those readers know the author or not.

At the same time, I’ve turned to blogs to bridge a void in my life. As a new mother, I felt every emotion imaginable, including ones I didn’t want to say aloud. I searched on line and found countless mothers – bloggers – who were feeling what I was. I discovered mothers who also cried every day despite their perfectly healthy, much-wanted and adored babies. I read about women who felt like their identities had been stripped away when they gave birth. I read blogs about mothers questioning their decisions to stay at home full-time with their children and how they transitioned to this new role.

Any of these issues I could have broached with the real women in my life. But I was scared. I was embarrassed. I couldn’t even verbalize some of the feelings I was having. But those blogs helped me get through those early months of being a new mother. Even though I had never met any of the bloggers I followed – never even posted a comment (gasp!) – they felt like they had become “friends” to me.

The writing isn’t always the best at these blogs. And as a former editor, the grammatical and punctuation errors that abound make that crease between my eyes grow ever deeper. But I’m not seeking perfection – and I would venture to guess that their other blog followers aren’t looking for Pulitzer-prize winning writing either. What we’re searching for is a voice that is similar to our own – a voice that speaks to us like a friend would.

And sometimes, after a day of chasing Cheerios and reading “Goodnight Moon” yet again, it’s comforting to read a post by someone who knows exactly what you’re feeling.