I’m not much of an astrology girl. When a friend tells me her car keeps breaking down because Mercury is in retrograde, I laugh. But whenever I have a strong feeling about something, I heed it, absolutely. Once, Laird was headed off to Pe’ahi, to the infamous break known as Jaws, so-named because it’s as unpredictable and as fatal as a shark attack, and I called him, catching him on his cell minutes before he and his crew set off on their Jet Skis for the deep water. I said, “Keep an eye peeled today, Lover.” That day he wiped out, his board came back at him and broke his shoulder.
Living this way, I’m always aware how fragile life is, how precious. And how things can go south at any time. Shit really does happen, as the bumper sticker tells us. Even if the divorce rate weren’t holding steady at about forty-eight percent, even if we all mated for life like geese, the reality of human existence is precarious. Anyone of us could get hit by a car, fall off our bikes and split our heads open, contract a fatal disease. I’m not suggesting that we should obsess over it, but to think it will never happen to us is to set ourselves up for a nasty surprise. Of course, we’d prefer not to think about it because it’s scary as hell.
And even if you’ve been blessed and nothing too terrible happens, and your partner is the poster child of consistency and a reliable provider, your children still are going to grow up and leave. And before that they’re going to become teenagers who want nothing to do with you. They’ll be out of the house at school or hanging with friends, and when they’re home they’ll be holed up in their rooms with the doors closed. They will allow you to serve them, of course, but do you really want to be one of those moms who scurries around after her fifteen-year-old picking up his dirty socks, “helping” him write his paper on the causes of the Civil War, and chauffeuring him hither and yon, just to prolong your feelings of being indispensable? One of the best things we can do as parents is to teach our kids to be independent; hovering over young adults as if they were in kindergarten is doing them, as well as yourself, a big disservice.
Empty-nest syndrome isn’t just a punch line. If you had your children at thirty, by the time you’re fifty they’re launched, and there you are, wandering around a house with too many bedrooms, grocery shopping for two. If you’ve been taking care of yourself, and are lucky enough not to have any health issues, you’ve got another thirty or more years of life ahead of you, roughly the same number of years in which you had no children to raise.
A friend’s college-age daughter gives horseback riding lessons and the little seven-year-olds are always amazed that this young woman of twenty is so old. One little girl was completely flabbergasted. “You’re three times as old as me!” she cried. “You could have children.” How endearing is that, how naive? And yet my thirty- and fortysomething friends with school-age children look at the women they know who have young adults and think their own kids will never be that old. Since they define themselves first and foremost as mothers, they’ll never truly figure out, as the poet Mary Oliver so famously said, “what to do with your one wild and precious life.”
However devoted we are to our families, and however seriously we take our role as mothers—and I take it very seriously—being a parent isn’t our only role, and I don’t think it ever pays to take ourselves too seriously. We’re moms. There have been millions before us and there will be millions after us. We may be the sun and the moon for our little ones, but we haven’t been tasked with destroying the Ring in the Mountain of Doom and saving mankind.
When I drop Reece or Brody off at school or ballet, I don’t have to be in full Mommy mode. I’m just Gabrielle, going about her day. And I want my girls to see that there’s more to being a woman than just serving her family.
Not long ago, at the end of one of those monstrously long days that began at five a.m. with Brody waking me up for a glass of water, even though the one I’d put on her nightstand at two a.m. was still there, minus a single sip, Reece asked me to name the four happiest days of my life.
Four? I thought, Four? I was tired and vaguely irritated. I didn’t think I could count that high. It was something of a setup, because Reece already had the answers.
“The day you met Dad!” she said.
Did I roll my eyes? It’s possible.
“I know!” she said. “The day you married Dad. The day you met Bela. The day I was born and the day Brody was born.”
The inside of my eyelids felt like sandpaper, but I took the opportunity to talk to Reece about how, as happy as those days certainly were, there were also other happy days. I talked to her about self-definition, and the importance of being your own person, no matter where life takes you, no matter whether you marry and have children or not.
I told her about my deep love of volleyball, and how every game, in its way, was a source of happiness whether we won or lost. I told her how it was my ticket out of an uncertain future. Volleyball brought me an education, a job I loved, and, ultimately, led me to her father. I recalled a time when I was playing professionally, when we’d just finished a night tournament in Detroit. We’d won the tournament, in part because of my contributions. The team had been struggling for a while before that win, but we’d come together when it counted. I can still feel the sweat on my back, the weird northern-style humidity of that place, the smells of evergreen trees and fresh water.
Reece was perplexed. She couldn’t imagine that there might be something that I, her mother, might do that would make me happy that didn’t in some way revolve around her and our family.
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY
If you’re at home in the trenches with the toddlers you’re probably not also going to be teaching yourself Arabic or computer coding, or keeping up your litigation skills on the off chance you have to get a job, pronto. But you should be spending some time during an average week doing something for yourself, if only to remind yourself that you have a self that actually enjoys something unrelated to being a wife and mother.
“Enjoyment” comes in a lot of different colors. Me, I like to work hard. Two daughters of two different friends just graduated from eighth grade and want to try out for their high school volleyball teams. I offered to take them to the beach with a bag of balls and train them. One of the girls had trouble with her serves and we stayed at the beach an hour longer than I’d planned, just so I could keep drilling her. I was determined to see some progress, and I wanted her to see some, too. That was fun for me.
You might have a crappy job that’s just a job. Many people do, and if you’re one of them, you also need an outlet, an occupation, that’s for you and you alone. Train for a 10k, bake some badass pies, start a book group and take it seriously (really read and think about the books). I have a friend who’s started a small business making gift baskets. It’s creative and she makes some extra cash and it gives her a chance to reconnect with a part of herself that she hasn’t been able to express in a long time.
And there’s something else: being defined as a person helps you cope with the pure terror that comes with having a child. We are so vulnerable. Our hearts are on the line. We’ve brought a being into this unfair, unpredictable world, in the process creating something the loss of which can break our hearts so thoroughly we will never recover.
That is scary shit.
And by the way, it’s part of why we’re so tight and intense in our parenting: “Watch your fingers.” “Don’t stand too close to the edge.” “Don’t go in the deep end.” “Stay away from that dog.” “Put down the scissors.” “Take that out of your mouth.” “No, you can’t have a skateboard.” “Call me when you get there.”
One modest way to help us stay sane is to do things that help us develop and maintain a sense of who we are, apart from our family. You’ve got to be anchored in yourself. In a lot of ways it’s a daily practice.
KEEPING THE GIRL SPIRIT ALIVE
It’s one of those old sayings that always comes with a heaping serving of disapproval and a side of eye roll: Boys will be boys. And so will men. To whi
ch I say, Thank god.
Maybe it’s because that somewhat corny old saying “A man works from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done” is so accurate it’s turned us into humorless multitasking taskmasters.
As you know, I’m all about work, about grinding. I’d be miserable if I didn’t have a lot of work. When I go to a hotel and have a single bag, and the bellman asks if he can carry it, I’m completely unable to hand it over. I have to carry it myself. Asking me to invest my time in something silly is like trying to turn a herding dog into a purse dog: misery for everyone concerned.
With all this said, women need to lighten up. All this hyper-domestication is making us resentful, miserable, and if not literally killing us, killing the girl spirit that lives inside us. Many of us scoff about the way guys love girls. We always think it’s purely sexual, but I think there’s another component: girls are light, playful, and free. They’re up for adventure. When we’re feeling like a house gnome with a hump on our back and a to-do list as long as our arm, the first thing to disappear from our personality is that sense of lightness and freedom. We become irritable and exacting. We lose our verve.
Everyone’s got her own way to keep it alive. I know a few moms who are devoted to their monthly board game night. They have plenty of snacks, gin and tonics, free-range hilarity. It would seem completely pointless. Unless, of course, you happen to believe that the point of life is to have fun.
You remember having fun, don’t you? And I don’t mean creating a situation is which your children can have fun and you draft off their enjoyment. Chuck E. Cheese can be a blast at a four-year-old’s birthday party, but would you ever go there for any reason with someone who had her adult teeth? I don’t think so.
Yes, kids are hilarious, and every moment you can enjoy that part of raising them you should. They live to gobble up all your attention, and so they are expert entertainers. It’s one of nature’s tricks. It keeps us from putting them up for sale or leaving them by the side of the road when they’ve been screaming for four hours straight. When they’re in their best cutup comedian mode, you really do owe it to yourself and to them to laugh your ass off.
But you’ve got to create some fun for yourself that isn’t about your kids. It can be as simple as throwing on your sneakers and go bopping around the lake, with your ponytail swinging behind you. Doesn’t matter whether you’re twenty-seven or sixty-seven. A forty-year-old ponytail is still a ponytail. When you jog around that lake, take the time to look around, check out your surroundings, take a personal inventory. Liberate yourself. If you can have a few girlfriends along, all the better. Have a laugh whenever you can. What’s on your iPod? Hopefully tunes that recall a time when you were open to everything life had on offer, when anything related to schedules or laundry was the furthest thing from your mind.
And cultivating that lightness of spirit isn’t just good for you.
Remember, your kids are watching—all the time. And in the blink of an eye they will be grown and trying to figure out life on their own. Don’t you want them to be optimistic and joyful, with a sense of life’s possibilities? At the very least, don’t you want them to think about you with a smile on your face and a bounce in your step, and not someone standing in the doorway of their room with that butt-crack line between your eyes, scowling, telling them to pick up their dirty clothes?
A WORD ON “HAVING IT ALL”
I don’t know where this “having it all” business started, but it’s fairy-tale bullshit. I’m going to assume that once upon a time “having it all” just meant having the same opportunities as men do. It was an expression of potential. Women, whether single, married, or married with children, should have the same options routinely available only to men.
It didn’t literally mean having everything. Little children know that life is unfair and that you can’t have everything you want. Is that what this inane question means now, in the spoiled rotten times in which we live? Do women really believe they can have and excel at the most perfect and rewarding career, while also experiencing the joy of parenting the exact number and gender of children they desire, living in a perfect home with a happy, hunky husband with whom they have frequent and mind-blowing sex, and also sustain a profound and nourishing spiritual life, while also maintaining the right number of interesting and satisfying friendships, as well as some delightfully distracting hobbies (crafting!), all while being youthful, dewy, tight of ass, firm of upper arm, with an eternally flawless mani-pedi to boot?
Is that what people mean? That life is unjust if wanting it all doesn’t lead to having it all?
Frankly, I don’t know who is having this conversation. Not the twenty-nine percent of co-breadwinning moms, or the nearly forty percent of breadwinning moms, surely. Their version of having it all means being able to take the Friday after Thanksgiving off, being told by the mechanic that the weird knock under the hood isn’t the transmission but simply a loose bolt, having a healthy kid without a police record, and being able to spring for a pair of new shoes now and again.
Men don’t have it all, and few people seem to fret about that. If a man wants to be a member of a family, he has to figure out how he can be the tough, aggressive guy out in the world, then come home and function as a father with colicky babies and miserable teenagers. He has to go out there every day and slay the mammoth—millions of men have jobs they don’t like or find unfulfilling, by the way—then walk back in the door and shift gears and go coach the seven-year-old’s T-ball team, then listen to his wife talk about her plans for the kitchen remodel.
Perhaps if I wasn’t married to a he-man like Laird, I wouldn’t be so aware of this. Being married to him has given me more compassion toward the plight of the male of the species. I think we should cherish our men, have fun, gather, take things less seriously, let things go.
The reality is this: we may think we want it all, we may think we want the so-called happily ever after, but we really don’t. Discomfort grounds us and grows us. Why do you think resistance training works? Because it makes your muscles struggle, forces them to become stronger and more efficient. Not having everything is how it should be. There’s no greater catalyst for growth than dissatisfaction. It makes you keep digging that tunnel to your true self, your true life.
But to endure and enjoy the struggle, we need to be the queen, not the princess.
What does it mean to be the queen?
The queen is ageless. She may be a young wife, a new mother, an older mother with many children, a mother whose children are grown and gone.
The queen is kind. The queen is generous. The queen works as hard, if not harder, than everyone else. The queen doesn’t sit on the couch saying, “I don’t feel like it.” The queen is not a victim. She is a cool, nonmanipulative loving partner. She lives by her codes. The queen is the head of the military, she listens to the pleas of commoners, she oversees all of the special celebrations and feast days. She is merciful. And remember, the queen may be fair and the queen may be just, but if you cross her, she will cut off your head.
The title is sitting there waiting for you.
And if you choose to take it on?
You will live interestingly ever after.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I share my experiences in this book in an attempt to remind people that happiness is not defined in one way. It’s up to each one of us to figure out what it means from moment to moment.
Thank you to Karen Karbo, the smartest, funniest writing partner I could have ever hoped for. I could bounce my ideas off her honestly and safely, and I learned so much from her in the process. Thank you for the honor of collaborating and helping me to have the balls to just say it. You are an amazing friend, and my love and respect for you are boundless.
I would like to tip my hat to everyone struggling to get it done and still figuring out a way to keep a smile on their faces and love in their hearts. Thanks to all of the people who have helped me to figure it out along the way:
My
friends, who are bright lights in my life year after year and who are willing to call me on my BS when I need it: Jennifer Meredith Castillo, Becky Pollack Parker, Kelly Meyer, Nancy Truman, Cirene Revan, Alexandra Drane, Caridyn Colburn, Tiffany Spencer, Jessica Hall, Shannon Lickle, Twanna Walker Taylor, Harper Reese, Sara Ell, Hutch Parker, and Cecile Reynaud.
Katie Dawson Roberts for your time and love for my family over the years, and for offering a single woman’s perspective on the book.
Susan Casey for taking time to read the book and give me your thoughts and support.
Courteney Cox for your love and support.
Chelsea Handler for a complete hard time.
Don Wildman for your friendship and for being a constant source of inspiration to our family.
Jane Kachmer for helping me to have the vision to turn the blog into a book.
Carol Kachmer for help keeping the Hamilton clan on course. We could not do it without you.
My love to the Reece, Borde, Glynn, and Zuccarello families. You are all a part of me wherever I go.
My wonderful editor, Shannon Welch, for her stellar guidance, and Scribner for taking a chance, giving this book a home, and seeing it through from start to finish.
Todd Cole for creating images that give us a sliver of the chaos, but making it seem just a little more dialed than the reality.
My beautiful and crazy daughters, Bela, Reece, and Brody Jo. You three are the greatest teachers I may ever know, and I am honored to be able to share life with you.
Last, to my king, Laird. Thank you for your understanding, love, passion, and for giving it your best each day. You have made my life so full of color and excitement, and without you. I may have just played it safe. I cherish the gift of knowing you, your love, and your partnership. Oh, and when our girls are difficult, I do blame you for those traits.
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