It was 1999. My husband and I had just moved to Los Angeles with our six-month old son. I was at a cafe, sitting across a bistro table from the Los Angeles bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal. It was no big deal, really — just meeting with the bureau chief of the paper I’d always dreamed of writing for.
We were in the middle of discussing some articles I’d written at previous newspaper jobs.
“I really like your clips,” he said. “But I want to see you write more profiles, get a bit more experience under your belt before we consider hiring you for the Journal.”
He then suggested that I try to find work at a local business daily, and grind away there for a year or two. Surely then I’d be a strong enough candidate for the likes of the WSJ.
Now, had the editor made me that offer six months earlier, I would’ve raced straight to the post office to shoot off resumes to every local publication within a hundredmile radius. But, as I sat there sipping my caffe latte, all I could picture was the delectable round face of my son. Would I really slave away at a mediocre job for the chance to possibly work at my dream job in 24 months?
In 24 months, he would be 2 and a half years old. All that time, lost forever.
I made up my mind then and there: I wasn’t willing to leave him for that. And so, without actually meaning to, without clearly thinking through all the myriad possibilities and complications, I opted out.
“Well,” I thought, “I’ll just freelance instead.”
And freelancing worked for a while. I got into a groove where I managed a steady stream of clients to cover the costs of my part-time babysitter and housekeeper…all while meeting the many demands of parenthood. Then, I had a second baby — and he wasn’t just any baby. He was one of those kids — you know, the kind that could keep you frantic all on his very own.
And just as I started getting into a groove again, I had a third baby. Three kids in less than five years. Needless to say, my freelance work started to recede into the rear-view mirror of my life, and I eventually had to call it quits.
I’ll let you in on a little secret about staying home with kids: it’s only enjoyable for certain types of people. People who are calm, maybe. Or people who like to do arts and crafts. Or people who keep in regular touch with their inner child.
Well, I’m none of those. I’m easily stressed. I cherish words on a page, not watercolors on paper or figurines in sculpting clay. I quickly realized that, more than anything else, I wanted to not play with my kids. Quite the opposite: I wanted to carve out time away from them. I’m a writer, and writers like to be alone.
My kids are now 17, 15 and 12, and I’m so very proud of them. They’re not what I hoped they would be — they’re more. Even the second one — especially the second one — is thriving. He may be my proudest accomplishment of all. I don’t know if he would doing okay — much less excelling at jazz trombone, and swim team, and academics — if I hadn’t been there to hold his hand for years, every harrowing step of the way.
But I’ll also be completely honest: staying home with them nearly sucked the life out of me, and I’m only now getting myself back.
Every once in a while, I find myself thinking, “Had I managed to keep working even it was just freelancing I’d have a more firmly established writing career than I do today.” And then my thoughts turn to my kids. “Would they be more resilient and self-sufficient had I continued working? Would I have wanted to play with them more? Would I have modeled a happier version of womanhood for them? Would I simply have enjoyed them more?”
Of course, there’s no going back now. I didn’t send out those resumes. I didn’t double down on daycare in order to maximize my writing time.
Here’s another secret though (this one’s about me): I couldn’t not write. I started by trying my hand at picture books — at the time, it was all I was reading — and then graduated to short stories for adults. Now, I’m deep into writing my first novel. It’s easily the most fulfilling professional work I’ve ever done. And I doubt I would have discovered this passion for fiction writing had I kept my nose to the career grindstone.
But who knows? Who can ever, really, second-guess the past?
