Modern Day Mama

Those who know me well will find it hard to believe that I now awake any earlier than 8:00 a.m. Obviously, I had to do this while working from home as my son woke up at around 6:30 in the morning. But I could always lay and vegetate for a moment—especially in the latter months when he started feeding himself. It’s amazing what the human body can do, even at 40, when forced. I am up at around 5:00 a.m. (sometimes even 4:45). Even this slacker time will soon change as I will be forced to get out of the house by 6:00 in the morning in order to beat traffic (so that's a 4:30 a.m. wake-up time). This will keep my commute down to a manageable 45 minutes. Otherwise, we’re talking 1 ½ hours, just shy of the amount of time my close friend has to drive to get to her job after dropping off the little one. This is now the life of the working mom.

Working while mothering is not a foreign concept to most women of color. For generations, most of our mothers have had to hold one or more jobs while caring for their families. However, many of these positions were smaller in scope and closer to home. I personally know of no mothers from my grandmother’s generation who drove 2 hours to get to their jobs and even in my mother’s generation most of the women I know were home in time to cook dinner and actually eat it with their families. Sometimes when I get home, both my son and husband have already gone to bed and, unlike most of my friends, I am not in a high-powered position such as producing or “doctoring.” I’m an executive assistant, who, on a good day, spends two hours each day in traffic. Further, while my job is administrative, it still isn’t the kind of thing you do just to keep busy or add a little spending change to your budget. My job is a necessary component to our economic survival and it requires mental stamina. Unlike before my son was born, I’m no longer in the position to take a low-paying industry gig in the hopes that some producer may recognize my brilliance and promote me to show runner (or at least staff writer). I have a real job, with real benefits and real expectations. This is the “Mama Big Leagues”—all so that 10 years from now I will able to avoid saying that fateful phrase, “we can’t afford it.”

The days of liberal government with liberal programs have now passed, despite the hype. The fact that my mother could simultaneously afford tennis lessons, piano lessons, theater lessons, dance lessons and private school, is a mystery beyond my comprehension (especially given the fact that this woman is no accountant). But I realize she had help. There were neighbors who were also good friends. There were grandparents who lived nearby. There was a father (though divorced from my mother) who, at one point, lived within walking distance of our house. And yes, here’s the liberal in me, there were programs. They were heavily funded by both the government and private donors. In the days when I grew up, everyone pitched in. There really was “a village.” Now, there are more like little islands and as much as friends offer to help (when it takes at least ½ hour to get to your house, you can’t go around asking folks to babysit all of the time), it takes so much more now to raise children—more money, more energy, more work, more, more, more … Even my own mother, upon visiting me for a week, commented on how much harder it was for me than her. “You get home awfully late,” she quipped. Just imagine if I were an executive! Or a lawyer! Or even a successful screenwriter! Perhaps a nanny would be involved in those scenarios but the angst, the stress, the sheer weight of a modern-day mamahood would still be present. There is no manual for us, no women who went before us and very little sympathy. After all, almost all mamas are going through some version of the same thing. It is a major adjustment, the effects of which we won’t fully see until our children have fully grown. We can only hope that while we may have missed bath time and a few first words, we’ll be able to relax in the later years and make it to the baseball games and plays. We hang onto the dream that we will not only have enough money but enough time and energy to help with prom and SAT preparation. We're banking on (literally and figuratively) a future for our children wherein we are very much present for them when they are old enough to remember.