Today, while my two children, ages 3 and 5, were watching a woodworking tutorial, I is writing from the office. The basement that doubles as my husband's office. It's raining today. Today I slept until 7am and started work an hour later. I'm fine today.
I mention this because I am the primary caregiver for my sons most days this summer when camp ends in her third week of July. During the New England drought, I would wake up at 5 a.m., work four hours or she five hours, and then work the day shift raising my children and taking my boys back and forth between pools, ponds, and oceans. I do this for them, and I do it for me.
But my work is my passion. Among my myriad responsibilities are grocery shopping, cooking meals, doing a lot of laundry, paying bills, general housekeeping, bed making, and an overall memory load. You need to remember which child is enrolled in what and which check-ups are required. You have to remember vacations and social events, who to call and check with, times and dates, unpaid bills, toilet paper and paper towels, dog food and heartworm medicine, and the wrong nail polish every time you find yourself.
Also, do not forget your own obligations that are not related to your family. Deadlines with editors, outstanding bills, bills to submit, swirling tornadoes, and more. My job, the emails you need to send, the emails you need to reply to, the business you run for yourself and yourself when you are a successful freelance writer, pulsating A never-ending course load. Sometimes the bubbling, constant force of nature that is my job collides with the force of nature that is my home life, and I think: ?Who would choose to do this?
Yes, I'm not the only one. This morning, Serena Williams was ranked the number one singles tennis player by the Women's Tennis Association for a staggering 319 weeks — the same Serena Williams who won 23 Grand Slam titles — is out of the sport. In a Voguearticle, speaking to Rob Haskell, she said: I don't think it's fair. If I were a man, I wouldn't have written this because I was winning playing outside while my wife did manual labor to expand our family.
Williams went on to say that quitting tennis wasn't the right choice for her. “My whole life up until now has been tennis,” she says. She didn't stop playing tennis because her motherhood got the better of her. She didn't quit tennis because she wanted to be her mother more than she wanted to be an athlete. The reason she's quitting tennis is because society — ultimately American society — doesn't give us any other real alternative. We either sit in a life that forces us to carry a brutal and insurmountable burden, or we choose to do what we love most in this world.
"Last year," says Williams. She feels she can always add them to her family when she's ready. I definitely don't want to get pregnant again as an athlete, I need her to be 2 feet in or 2 feet out of tennis. ''
Serena Her Williams has spoken out about her mother's condition in America. She is all of us, half work, half domestic duties, she is the one who has two people inside. When she is with her child, she thinks of work. As she works, she thinks of her children. There is no mechanism to reduce the burden. No one pays me for the time I spend preparing dinner, answering birthday invitations, or packing for vacation.
Can a mother have it all? Selena says we can't — she's not wrong. I believed that family life, fairy tales are possible. But without the infrastructure to support it, without allowing a true division of labor, this commodity we sell girls to is just a lie.
After all, the American mother always gives up a part of herself: "She misses her days when she was playing tennis," Williams says. The truth is, we all will.
