Kitaiska Sandwich

Every night this week in our hotel room, L is awake with a 104° fever. After 72 hours without sleep, the gerbil-wheel in my brain will not shut down. I worry that the ear thermometer is not accurate, that the fever is really higher, that it will cause brain-damaging seizures. I worry that we are in a strange city and we don’t know where to take him if he gets sicker. I worry that it will take us too long to wake up his brother and find our shoes and pack the kids in the car and find a hospital and he will die before we get there. These thoughts sound silly now, days later, when he is healthy and smiling. But at 4 am in the hotel room they feel very real.

I brought him here, knowing he was coming down with something as we left town, because I could not imagine telling my boss that I couldn’t come to this conference — which I committed to attend over six months ago, for which my organization has paid in advance. Again and again, I feel forced into situations that prioritize my job over my health, the health of my kids, and my sanity. Because I am loath to ask for “special accommodations.” Because it is impossible, in my employer’s culture of martyrdom, to say that I simply cannot work evenings and weekends. That I need to be home to put my children to bed.

I consider skipping the conference, driving home in the morning. But we balk at packing up the car to spend four more hours on the road. We decide my husband will take the kids to my mother-in-law’s house for the day. I leave my miserable child, exhausted and sick with worry, and go to the training as planned.

I can’t focus, because I am preoccupied with self-pitying arithmetic: of the 18 people in the room, only six of us are parents. Of the six, four have children grown and out of the house. Another has school-age children with whom he shares alternate-week custody with his ex. Satisfied, I award myself first place in my imaginary hierarchy of suffering.

The first speaker of the day is asking us to turn off our phones and laptops. She shows a PowerPoint slide of the words Be Here Now. I am a million miles away from Here and Now. I spend the day worrying. When I take a break from worrying, I sulk.

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Every time I read another all-staff e-mail from a co-worker with a new baby that begins “It is with mixed emotions that I say goodbye,” my jaw clenches and my stomach knots and I think, “Fuck you.” And I think about the hours I spent hunched over the computer, back at work less than two weeks post-partum, infant nursing in a sling on my lap, still aching and sleepless and raw. Wanting to quit my job so bad it hurt. But that has never been an option, not without losing my health insurance and my house.

My boss has been accommodating and supportive. He let me work from home during the last months of my difficult second pregnancy. He arranged for my organization to pay for a hotel room for my entire family so I could attend this conference, because I could not leave my still-breastfeeding younger son at home. He responds to my almost weekly “Can’t come in today; sick kids” e-mails with sympathy and concern. He is a really nice guy, and he wants me to keep my job.

He stops by my desk after the most recent “fond farewell” e-mail. He wants to discuss how the workload of the soon-departing new mom will  be covered. After I agree to take on some of her duties, he says, joking, “I hope you’re not jealous of her!”

Joking, because he really doesn’t think I am. Because he does not remember very clearly what it is like to have children — his daughter is in her mid-thirties. Because he did not experience childbirth or breastfeeding or the impossible conflict between what your child needs from you emotionally and what you must do to provide for him physically. Because he does not live with an autistic pre-schooler who kicks and punches and screams and grinds his teeth and claws at his own face, who has not slept through the night more than three times in his three years. Because he cannot possibly understand the deep well of bitterness I feel when I talk to mothers who have time for walks to the park, trips to the zoo, music and yoga classes, daily exercise, daily showers, reading the news, date nights with their husbands, leisurely lunches with friends. Time to plan elaborate birthday parties for their kids, to make hand-made gifts and toys, to plant a garden, to volunteer at their child’s school, to write thank-you notes and fill photo albums. Mothers who tell me smugly how glad they are that they never had to use a breast pump. Mothers who are very much like me, except they happened to marry someone with a six-figure income, or they inherited a trust fund. Which makes them, in the end, not like me at all.

I’m no Martha Stewart, and I have no illusions about stay-at-home-mom domestic bliss. If I had more time to myself, more time with my kids, I wouldn’t spend it monogramming tea towels or sculpting tiny rice animals to fill bento lunchboxes. But I struggle daily with my resentment that I do not have the time to be the kind of mother I thought I would be.

“I like my job,” I answer, avoiding the question.

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I get it, really I do, that my life is full of privileges that the majority of the people who have ever lived in the world cannot even imagine. I’m a white, well-fed North American with a regular paycheck, health insurance, a husband, and a home. I own a washing machine, a microwave, a computer. I have thousands of material comforts that people in other parts of the world will never enjoy. I have an incredibly supportive extended family. I have a lot to be thankful for.

I work for an organization whose mission I support. And for a judgmental bitch like me, that kind of work is hard to find. There was a time in my life when I felt passionate about it — before I had children, when there was passion left over for other things. My work is interesting, challenging, and often satisfying. I like my co-workers. I have 19 years invested in my career.

This job is not my problem. My problem is a big tangle of intractable political issues that will never go away; not in my lifetime. My problem is that I live in a country that doesn’t offer paid parental leave, universal health care, support for breastfeeding at work, support for part-time or flexible schedules, respite care for parents of kids with disabilities, an economy in which one income is enough to support a family, or a social climate in which it is acceptable to take time off to care for children. A country that offers very few choices to mothers who were not born into a certain amount of money. And in this context, even the best of jobs fails to meet the needs of my family. Fails so thoroughly that it’s hard to feel thankful for the good parts.

My job involves a lot of ‘advocacy writing’ — the kind with snappy headlines and bullet points and supporting evidence and always, always a call to action at the end. I feel like I should take a quick break to Google whatever family leave bills are currently winding through Congress so I can funnel all this angst into a tidy solution: Click here to contact your legislator! With your support, we can win a more family-friendly workplace! Look how the Swedes do it! ¡Sí se puede!

The enthusiastic organizers fresh out of college usually take the first pass at the copy, so my job also involves deleting a lot of exclamation points.

But of course that’s the beauty of a personal blog — I’m not responsible to any editor. I can write with no purpose or funnel or call to action. I don’t have to report click-through rates to anybody. I can just whine.

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Today, at the conference, a colleague presents a project to the group: a website that features short video statements from workers about issues they face on the job. In one video, a man talks about fighting for improvements to paid sick time. He says the old system [sick and vacation leave taken from one bank] forced some people to burn through all their paid time off, leaving nothing left for a vacation. He repeats several times that this was especially unfair to parents of young kids with frequent illnesses. “Kids get sick all the time,” he says. “It’s hard. We have to support those parents.”

Everyone in the room nods and murmurs in agreement.

I shouldn’t be surprised that so few of us are parents of young children. The reason has been communicated to me very clearly over the years. This is not the right job for a parent. Honestly, this is not even the right job for a pet-owner. If another living thing depends on you, and you prioritize those needs over the needs of your employer, then there are few jobs in this country that are right for you.

It’s the job I’m stuck with for the moment. But next time, I will call in sick.