I came across this post on Sarah Palin today and read it eagerly. I am still trying to figure out my conflicted emotions about a woman with such very young children taking on so very much in her life.

Women who work outside the home do not parent full-time–that’s their choice and one that is often good for both mother and family. I have been working full time for years, and it’s what makes me happy (and a much better mother). Contrary to what many pundits argue, I don’t buy that it’s always ideal to have a full-time parent at home… I believe it depends on the individual family.

BUT… this is a valid argument:

“It (parenting) is a JOB. And it is unfair to women to speak of it as if it were not a job. When we speak of being a parent as if it were something we are and not something we DO, we do a disservice to all parents.”

The core of what is being discussed here is the level of self sacrifice a woman can be expected to give her “boss” (in Palin’s case, the Unites States itself), while also fulfilling her elemental role as a nurturer for her infant.

Again, my conclusion is the same: it’s each to her own. I just hope that as we continue to grow and learn from these discussions, women end up feeling freer to make their own decisions, without all the  guilt and second-guessing. After all, our husbands have stepped up to the plate big time (have you seen Mad Men recently?!), and although they’re not perfect, neither are we. Maybe in the future we’ll find a way to have them take over the breastfeeding…

I’ve been talking non stop about Palin with friends and on the internet.

Many mothers insist that she does not make them feel in any way inadequate, they just hate her politics. Or, if they love her politics, they think it’s cool that she can be a role model to other women.

I’m just not sure about the role model part.

In the book, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Undermines All Women,  Meredith Michaels says, “The new momism both draws from and repudiates feminism.” So true!

I believe in a woman’s right to make choices in her own life, and to do what’s best for herself and her family. Palin obviously has her act together, and doesn’t seem to struggle with the need for downtime or calm (but who knows…).  So her choices are right for her. She can have five kids and manage a really major job. That’s not for everyone.

So I think having young girls grow up and seeing a woman like Palin as the gold standard is not really the all that evolved or positive. If a woman decides to have just a couple of kids and stay home, does that then make her inferior, unable to live up to her potential? I’m just not sure every woman’s goal needs to be having a truckload of kids AND taking on the world of business or politics.

For the women who are suited to that lifestyle — and there are many — well, that’s truly admirable. But I say let’s remember there’s no one standard, no perfect role model for modern mothers.

It’s each to her own. Let’s revel in whatever choices we make, and not be led astray by the belief that to be “successful” we have to do it all.

I’ve been thinking about Sarah Palin all week. Of course; what mom in America hasn’t been searching their souls?

I was dismayed by my initial reaction which was, hey, that woman has a four month old  and FOUR other kids. Can she really give herself 24/7 to the job of Vice President? Who is taking care of her FIVE children?

My crusty old instinct as a mom was rearing its ugly head and I was shocked. I mean, I think mothers have a right to work! I am a liberated working mom myself!

But…. I guess when push comes to shove, I want to know who does what in the Palin household so I can feel comfortable with the idea of mommy not being available for a sick infant, for example. My kids were sick constantly when they were little. Who in Palin’s home deals with the 2:30 a.m. tylenol-dose, the 3:45 a. m. hot-steam shower treatment and the 7 a.m. call-in-sick-to-work drama?

Just tell me Dad does it, or a fantastic grandma/ aunt or someone who loves that child and those children as much as Palin does, then I feel OK.

After so much musing about my own surprisingly old-fashioned gut reaction, I decided that most mothers, me included, probably feel kind of threatened by Palin.

Why? Because we look at her and go pale. We see the uber-working-mom, the possible future VICE PRESIDENT, for God’s sake. She represents the potential that we are not able to live up to. Our standards are so high, and all we see in her is where we have failed. She represents what we all could be (should be–we ask ourselves?) if we were driven, ambitious, Type A, together, smart… bla, bla, bla, you get my drift.

We judge ourselves harshly in the light of everything she seems to achieve in any given day. We see her with her trim figure and pretty made-up face and think, damn, how come I can’t get the laundry done AND get to work on time? How come I wither at the idea of being on the PTA and meeting all my deadlines and shopping for food and taking the kids to their appointments and finding a new babysitter and researching camps and, and, and, and…

Are we jealous? Are we insecure? Why do modern moms feel we have to judge other mothers’ lives so harshly?

Because of how it makes us feel about how we run our own lives. Many of us have lost a sense of confidence about how WE want to do things, and spend too much time worrying about how we match up in comparison to others.

How do we solve this? To start, we have to:

• make peace with our own choices
• understand what we are good at…
• … and what we don’t do so well
• accept our inadequacies (we can’t say it often enough: no one is perfect!)
• make the most of our strengths
• judge how well we are doing by how happy our own family is, not by how others perceive us
• give ourselves credit for how hard we try
• quit judging ourselves or others so harshly
• know ourselves well enough to be able to set our own, authentic (achievable) goals
• live in the moment, and enjoy the small pleasures of our everyday lives

I am happy about back-to-school. Really. Kinda.

This time of year, we are all yearning to get back on a schedule, though we’ve enjoyed the long, late evenings and the lack of homework. Since I work at home so much, I look forward to the quiet in the house, where the only sound that I can hear is the ticking of the clock, or NPR in the background.

But today I have some serious school bus blues. My littlest, Svenja, had to leave her beloved school and move to another one because she has some special needs. I took her older sister to the old school and dropped her off, and then took Svenja to her new bus stop. I felt antsy and sad.

Svenja was fine. She was hiding her nerves well, and was focusing on the excitement of the bus. When she climbed on, she didn’t look back at me. She’ll be OK. It’s me I’m worried about!

Mothers tend to be more worried about the future and sentimental about the past and it doesn’t do us any good. We could learn from our kids–they really do live in the moment. The energy and optimism that comes from being present in the now rather than stuck, mentally, somewhere else is a real gift. I am going to work on that today.

Sometimes I feel like that strange creature on Ghostbusters whose head spins around manically, eyes popping out like gooped-up marbles. I don’t like the feeling too much. My brain goes on strike. In fact, I start:

1. having trouble making decisions
2. REALLY losing things, as opposed to sort of losing things — this means I have no recollection whatsoever of that paper I had in my hands two seconds ago
3. being bitchy and saying sh*t a lot more than I usually do
4. feeling resentful
5. feeling fat (what’s the connection? I don’t know, but such is life)
6. being stymied about what on earth to tackle next
7. re-writing my to-do list over and over again, in smaller writing, so I can make it at least look shorter

Then, I stop dead in my tracks. I decide, to hell with this, I’ve had it!

Usually, I have to just let everything drop and face the consequences the next day. It’s as if I’m on strike — I don’t really decide to do go on strike, it just happens.

I’m not quite at that point yet. I still have some crazed whirling to do, but I can see it looming, that breaking point when my whole body is screaming at me: IT CAN WAIT TILL TOMORROW!

I am taking some of my own medicine. It’s time to say enough is enough, I’m beat.

I went to the doctor for the kids’ annual check ups today. I made the appointment early thinking, great, I’ll knock them all off at the same time in about an hour and then I can get back to work.

Well. Think again.

I was there for two and a half hours. Who would have guessed that Svenja would have a freak out about the shots and have to lie down and be monitored (after dry-heaving for a while)? Who would have thought the nurse would be so THOROUGH. I mean, I’m grateful and all but do you have to ask about how often they floss their teeth and is it really a bad lie if I just nod when she says, “Every day, right?”

But here’s the clincher. I came away from that appointment with eleven new items on my to-do list. ELEVEN. When I told Kevin, he was finally impressed. Usually he acts like, no biggie, I could do that in a heartbeat when I moan about how tedious and time-consuming some of these child-related chores are, but this time he was like, “Wow, you are actually Superwoman!”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that no, not really, I’m just a plain old mom. We all do it, all the time!

These are the natural, everyday facts of being a mother: you never actually master your to-do list. Never. Once you realize this, once you accept it and make peace with that challenging reality, you learn to handle the unexpected turns in life better. You stop seeking definitive answers and you stop expecting to reach the finish line.

As a mother, you roll with the punches. Your frustration level is lower, because you have understood that you cannot ever be on top of everything. Learning to live with imperfection, with unfinished business and mushrooming to-do’s takes some real patience. But try, because the rewards are manifold.

I was chatting with a friend yesterday who has been working full time this summer for the first time in many years.

“Gotta say, sort of can’t wait for back-to-school…” she admitted.

I told her that I have to go to Ikea and Target today and she said, between gritted teeth: “Oh… getting back to school stuff done?”

I wish! I still have so many chores on my plate related to this hellacious bathroom renovation, and, um, it’s my son’s 15th birthday TOMORROW and, um, have we got him one single gift yet? No! Am I running to the store today to desperately buy him some stuff? Yes! So — am I getting organized for back to school? NO!

Sure , it’s nice to have the new backpacks at the ready, the shiny sneakers bought, the cubbies cleaned out and the desks cleared up and organized with new bookshelves, folders, what-have-you. But tell me this, do they have to come with all that on the very first day of school? Can it wait until the first day after school — no homework yet and no one elbowing you out of the way at Staples for that perfect highlighting pen?

So here’s to some sensible procrastination. I could squeeze it all in now and go crazy, or I could wait until AFTER everyone else has rushed to the stores. It’s all going to get done, the only question is: will I do it like a perfect mom or like a real mom?

You guess.

(And now, whoops, it’s 5:30 am, time to start working…)

We were just at a family reunion with 48 far-flung members. Bunches of kids running around, eating mac and cheese for a week straight and not a vegetable in sight. Late nights, late mornings and fairy palaces built in the woods.

The teenagers slept all day, counted their zits, played badminton and talked (yes, actually held conversations) with the adults.

The adults made the rounds of the cabins, leisurely checking in with the other gray-haired-ones, assessing life’s ups and downs (thankfully, mainly ups) and just hanging out.

No phones. No internet. Hardly anyone even opened a book or a newspaper. Pure down time.

Life as a mother is a constant work in progress. You’ve probably figured this out already, but no one ever has all the answers. We are always searching, and sometimes the search can be very interesting…

Early this morning I was reading Deepak Chopra’s novel “Buddha.” Late last night, I was flipping through, “How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk.” Then I stopped for a minute to ponder the strange and wonderous intersection between these two incredibly different texts.

The Buddha book is about living with compassion and accepting and overcoming pain. It is, essentially, about rising above our physical selves and acknowledging that our day-to-day worries are minor in the face of the awesomeness of the universe.

Cool stuff. But what about paying the bills or getting the kids to school on time?

We struggle to deal with the burdens of our real lives (and whether they are small or large, everyone has burdens) by holding onto a sense that there is something larger at play, something that puts the little irritations or big burning desires into perspective.

When I think about these considerations in respect to the teens book I was just reading, it makes me laugh. The teen book is so enlightening and sensible in its own way, and so utterly the opposite of the Chopra novel. Put the two together and I think you have the essential quandary of the life of a parent: how to marry the concerns of the everyday with the perspective of an enlightened human!

Everyday reality is something us moms  cannot really transcend — we have to figure out the nuts and bolts of dealing with hormonal kids or exacting work demands or babies needing food. But if we can do it all with some humor, with an understanding that it’s ok to be doing the best we can (as opposed to being perfect), and that there are forces at work that are larger than us… well, then I think we’ll all be all right in the end.

An old friend visited yesterday. She’s a year older than me and has a three-year-old and a 9-month old (compared to my almost-15, almost-13 and 9-year-olds!). We tried to have a conversation and for about four hours, we managed to conduct a stacatto, interrupted, utterly non-linear and almost nonsensical exchange punctuated by both of us hovering steps behind a crawling baby, pulling a huge dead moth out of said baby’s mouth, feeding a wiggly-screaming-starving baby, and, finally, entertaining a dead-tired, sleep-fighting baby.

Phew. This was a friend who I loved visiting in NYC because she was a career woman without kids and seemed to have no interest in my life-of-kids-diapers-and-chores. It was so refreshing!

And how things have changed! I love the turn our friendship has taken. All those years when I would escape from my suburban life and live vicariously through our visits, I so enjoyed her for being everything that I was not. I never took my kids with me, and we talked about love and life, work and sports. Not about kids or husbands or any of that “normal-life” stuff.

Now she is where I was about 13 years ago. I have to bite my tongue not to give her too much advice. As a “new” mom, you don’t want your friends telling you what to do–you want to live it and learn it through your own experience. You can’t imagine how many times I have to stop myself from saying something like, ohmygod read chapter five, you HAVE to have sex more often or else! What could be worse than a know-it-all friend who spouts advice at you from HER OWN BOOK?

Instead I smile sweetly, and wait for the day when we can have a full conversation again. Maybe in another 13 years…

Good friendships can last and thrive through all sorts of phases… and I am so thankful for that gift.