Balance
This piece is part of an annual personal essay project run by former Oregonian editor George Rede and posted to his blog. I’ve participated for most of the past 12 years of the project.
The worst days are the ones when I feel like I’m failing at everything. Failing to be a good enough mom, failing to be in good enough shape, failing to do my best at work. Those days make me angry and defensive and sad. They don’t happen all the time. For me, they aren’t frequent enough to be considered clinical, for which I am grateful. But for anyone trying to balance work and life and kids, those days happen.
For two weeks in July, my girls are enrolled in Portland Parks & Rec swim lessons. The lessons are every day for two weeks and they start at 5:10 p.m. It was a stroke of luck to get the lessons in the first place. You have to be online at a set time, mouse hovering over the register button until it turns green and lets you in. Of course, to do any of that you need a job that lets you set aside time at 12:30 on a given Tuesday to sit at a computer with fast internet and hover your mouse over an oval-shaped icon until it turns green. Some days I have that job – a privilege – and other days I don’t.
Then, to get the kids to the actual lesson, someone needs to pick them up from school at 4:45, drive them to the park where the pool is located, walk two approximately 3 foot tall humans quickly across the park, get them into their swimsuits and then to the pool deck in time for their teenage instructors to call their names. To do all that, you need a bag — packed the night before — with sun lotion, goggles, swimsuits and snacks. Do not forget the towels. Definitely do not forget the snacks. You also have to have a dinner plan that can be achieved in under 10 minutes once you get home, otherwise the children melt. Or they don’t go to bed on time, which means they will melt tomorrow.
It’s not impossible. There’s just not a lot of room for error…
