The Myth of Mommy Time

Back in 2000, I made a commitment to get healthier – diet, exercise, the whole enchilada. I lost weight fairly quickly but was worried I’d gain it back once I reached my goal. I knew I needed something to keep me motivated, so I registered for the 3-Day, a 60-mile walk for breast cancer over three days. We’d start in Rockland County on a Friday and walk into Manhattan on Sunday, covering 20 miles each day.

The training for this event was unlike anything I’d ever done. I walked every day, and for several hours on the weekend, my feet covered in Vaseline and baby powder and Dave Matthews in my ears. I loitered around the forums on the walking page of About.com. I was able to devote huge amounts of time on this project because I didn’t have any children at the time, but, as I saw once I arrived at the event, plenty of parents had dedicated just as much time as I and trained just as prodigiously.

The walk was scheduled for the third weekend in September 2001. Ten days earlier, well, you know. The organizers of the walk decided to postpone and donate the tractor-trailer showers and huge supplies of water and snacks to the recovery effort at Ground Zero. The change of date (coupled with the fact that this event was taking place in the NY area, so there was the possibility that some walkers, or loved ones of walkers, were killed in the towers) meant there were many dropouts. I think the numbers went from nearly 4000 to some 1500.

Still, 1500 is a lot of people, plus volunteers, vehicles, porta-potties and tables set up with water, fruit and granola bars. The route of the walk had to be changed, too, and most of it now took place in Westchester County. We walked through the buccolic towns where “Fatal Attraction” and “Unfaithful” were filmed. It was really beautiful.

But imagine what it was like for the pampered residents of these neighborhoods. They visibly resented the invasion. Joggers and other neighbors walking their dogs barely acknowledged us as we trudged and huffed along their sidewalks. It was becoming very uncomfortable. Then, one morning, we saw two women pushing toddlers in jogging strollers. One woman was talking very animatedly to her friend and gesturing at us. At the very moment I was passing her, she exploded, like she couldn’t contain her disgust any longer.

“Don’t any of you have children?” she yelled, seemingly right at me. “How are you able to do this? Did you just leave your kids at home?” she shouted accusingly.

The bunch of us who witnessed this had a good laugh, which only pissed her off further, and we continued to titter over it for another mile or so. But her basic question bothered me. We were doing this for the detection and treatment of breast cancer, which strikes one in eight women. Poor and underinsured women would be able to get mammograms thanks to the money we raised. There were groups of friends, families and co-workers walking in memory of someone who either fought or succumbed to breast cancer. These groups would often wear T-shirts bearing the photo of their loved one. We listened to stirring talks from breast cancer survivors who thanked us for our efforts each night at dinner. And this stay-at-home bitch living in a $1.5 million house was accusing us of being selfish?

I think about that woman a lot now that I’m a mom. Back in 2001 I was galled at her self-centered perspective. Just because you have a family, does that mean you’re exempt from thinking about others, about the world at large? Does it become all about your family once you have kids? Couldn’t her hedge-fund manager (or similarly-employed-in-the-financial-services) husband be imposed upon to, you know, parent his own kids while his wife did something worthwhile? Was she implying that mothers had no business frittering away time on diseases, environmental concerns or injustices that didn’t affect their family directly? And what about time for oneself?

I made a childless-person vow to never be so insular, that I wouldn’t make my children my life. That I’d maintain interests and passions, and that by doing so, I’d be setting a powerful example to my kids about our responsibility to the world around us.

Then I became a parent. I became a mother of a child who was, temporarily, a special needs child. I had to establish attachment with a 10-month-old who wouldn’t make eye contact with me. For our daughter’s sake, we needed to keep our world very small for a time. I was happy to go to baby jail. 

She did attach to us, like a house a’fire, as it turned out. But I had turned into “that mom,” the one who never went anywhere by myself and was hesitant to prevail upon my husband, who was working 90-hour weeks.

In 2007, when Tink had been with us for more than a year, a friend suggested we go to BlogHer in Chicago. I wrung my hands over it for weeks. Leave my baby? There was no reason I couldn’t go. Tink was happy, C was “supervising” the plans for the restaurant (meaning, he wasn’t working), so what was stopping me?

I went and was slack-jawed with freedom for three and a half days, eating in restaurants that didn’t even have high chairs and having uninterrupted conversations with other adults. It was blissy.

I was punished when I got home. I couldn’t wait to get off the plane and hold my baby girl, but Tink wouldn’t look at me. C couldn’t understand it. She had been fine all weekend and didn’t seem to miss me terribly. It took two more days before she was her old self with me, and then I realized. She wasn’t angry. She was hurt that I left her.

I haven’t done it since. There was one girls’ night out to see the “Sex and the City” movie, but that was after bedtime and she never knew I was gone. I guess there have been a few times that I stole away to Barnes & Noble while C was home, but I always felt guilty for doing so and irritated with Tink once I got home. Mommy Time only made me want more and wonder why my child was acting like such a 3-year-old. 

Despite all this, I’m considering going to BlogHer this year. Tink will be 4 this year. She should be better able to handle my absence this time around.

And I did gain most of the weight back (of course), so I think I need a dramatic plan, another athletic challenge. There is an Avon two-day breast cancer walk I’ve done before – a marathon and a half over two days. 

I’ve got that “The time for action is now!” feeling. I think it’s time I become that Westchester woman’s very definition of a selfish mom.

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Tagged as: BlogHer, diet, DMB, exercise, movies, New York, parenting, SAHMs, walking