This probably isn’t the right week to write this since I’m on nearly 100% kid-duty while N TA’s an all-week class, and therefore feeling/thinking these things more intensely than I might otherwise (normally I have three afternoons away from home a week to write), but I think they all still stand.

I’m feeling the tug of work-outside-of-home these days–a growing internal momentum for it, a kind of ripeness for all the things I’ve studied and learned and experienced and contemplated to be funnelled into my writing life.  One’s 30s are often a time of intense engagement with work–when careers start to hum and when the gangliness that for many of us is our 20s starts to mature and deepen into something more like full-blown adulthood.  Couples who have young kids in this decade, and no nanny, probably all have to choose which in their pair will run with this outside-of-home momentum, and which will run with the inside stuff–which will work primarily with the kids, and which will "work" primarily with other things.  (intentional, even if not totally serious, use of quotes in that sentence)

But then there are those, like me, who are trying to do both.  And this is what I’m thinking about tonight.  At the same time that I feel the tug of outside-of-home work, I feel a tremendous tug to be home.  Or rather, multiple tugs, quite literally, on my legs all day.  The work of being present to and engaged with Elijah in the ways I want to be and the ways I think he deserves, combined with the work of running a household well–it fills up every hour I’m willing to give it.  And more.  This dance that is running a household and tag-teaming childcare with N and working on my book and maintaining this blog and keeping a percentage of my brain active on dreaming up next projects, well, I have to say it often feels less like a dance and more like a tug-of-war.

Sometimes I daydream about how spacious my life would feel if I just gave up writing–if I devoted myself to home stuff and kid stuff alone.  On one level, the thought feels like utter relief.  It feels like letting waves push me to shore rather than struggling against them, like joining the current rather than fighting my way always upstream.

But every time I have that thought, the very next one is a kind of voice, calling me to not give up.  It sounds like parents do when encouraging infants to walk.  "There you go–YES–nice work!  You can do it!  Yes, keep going.  Alright!"  Unlike them, it’s a lot more subtle, and speaks more with the twinkling of eyes and a beckoning glance than actual words.  But it has the same effect on me:  it keeps me standing up again and again, no matter how incessently gravity pulls me down.  It keeps a kind of hopeful grin on my face, and my banged up (or, as per the tug-of-war, pulled-apart) mind and body ever pressing on to sit down in front of this screen.

I feel like the universe wants me to write, and like something in me is alive and strong and beautiful when I am.  I can’t give this up.  I don’t want to.  I so terribly don’t.

So I keep doing it.  And living in the midst of all these tugs.  I feel weary of it, wanting to say to any one of them, "Fine!  I give up!  You win."  But I’m simultaneously energized by the writing part and the childcare part (no, I will never love spending hours on the phone with insurance companies, nor scouring the tub.  And I’d totally love the next place we live to have a dishwasher.).

But…so…is this just how it’s going to be?  Is living in this tension just the way of life as a dual-career person?  Can tug-of-war, practiced long enough, ever turn into a dance?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Motherhood, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.