Monday, Tuesday Happy Day

The sun is brilliant this morning. But there's no doubt it's winter, as the large thermometer out front of my office marks the temperature at 34 degrees. I am just thankful for the sunlight, since it seems we were shortchanged this summer. Right now, two of my girlfriends are getting ready for a play date. I'm imagining lots of running around, hot tea, cookies, and happy babies. I wonder if I should have taken the morning off to join them. It's going to be a long day and long week at the office. I pray that I can work out at least one day off this week.

Planning for War

Strategizing for life and happiness is very similar to the methods for winning a war. Strategy is the key component for both planned and spontaneous moments taking us from one point to another. We were having breakfast at the Family Diner just this past Sunday and I overheard a family who seemed to be in the midst of an intervention for their niece, a heroine addict. The tone of their conversation was very encouraging. When asked what her thoughts were for her future, she replied that she believed that everything happens for a reason. The fact that a friend contacted her out of the blue and referred an open job at the local factory felt preordained. The timing and unexpected nature of the opportunity colored it fate in her mind. Calling it all fate was the best, only acceptable way she could cope with the reality of her own poor decisions. In her uncle's attempt to agree with her in order to keep the positivity flowing, he failed to contribute any real wisdom. Her grandfather, a shrunken man over age 80, shook his head and muttered an indecipherable comment. The uncle interpreted it to mean that in grandpa's day, the ideal situation would have been for her to find a nice man to marry and pay her bills. In truth, I believe the 80 year old man probably meant more than this and wanted to give real pearls of wisdom but was paralyzed by the tragedy and apprehensive hope that his granddaughter could escape the drug world and survive the next 20 years being self sufficient. In any case, this last weekend took on a tone of desperation of someone at the brink of loosing total control over her circumstances.

I was visiting with a girlfriend of mine this last week on a play date with our two baby bears. Like all new mothers, it was a matter of time before her bubble of self expectation would burst and she become exposed to her new uncontrolled reality. I've read articles in several parenting magazines that exposed this bubble. Our post baby life is so incongruous with our pre-baby life that all our prior experiences become inapplicable. All of a sudden, it's a lot of chaos. The chaos in fact that never ceases to end. The hardest part is being able to see beyond the fog of self denial and witness the clear picture that we are in the process of changing identity. No one has made the comparison that becoming a parent is like the process of a worm molting into a butterfly. You are no longer your prior self in physical form, though your spirit remains the same but changed. The goal is to regroup and reorient. The goal is to form new goals and get rid of old ones that no longer work.

What's most difficult for us Kohler-Designer moms is the fact that we're not from around here. There is no family support. We're all on our own. Our husbands are the main bread winners and they work at Kohler, one of the most demanding companies ever to exist. Therefore, if we are to succeed in making this picture work we must identify, strategize and attack.

My friend and I talked about our own respective future plans as parents. Possible second babies in near future. How to hasten our husband's metamorphisis into parenthood. How to regain control of our own current life so that we can walk out of our doors more often without so much worry of the uncontrollable. The best thing we got out of our conversations was knowledge that we weren't the only ones going through this and that we weren't going insane as our husbands would have it. it was vindicating to find confirmation for how we've been feeling. Baby steps in the right direction but undeniably steps in the forward direction.

Accepting the Uncontrollable

"Motherhood means accepting the uncontrollable."

Clay had planned a weekend vacation to celebrate our sixth year wedding anniversary in Chicago weeks before he left for London. The thought of traveling 4 to 5 hours from Wisconsin through Chicago city traffic and staying 3 days in an unfamiliar environment sounded like too much work to be fun. In fact, the closer the day came the more I thought about the mountain of things to do: buy a new car seat that faced foward, pack food supply-diaper supply-traveling supply-clothing-toys-medicine for baby, bring bathing suits for everyone since Clay suggested swimming at the hotel pool, bring medicine for Clay's cold, pack Midol and maxi pads for me (just in case), coordinate and drop off the dogs at the kennel, map my way to the hotel, and get out of work early enough to beat rush out traffic.

Sunday night, I was close to a panic attack and wondered if this weekend was going to turn into the year of our divorce with images of travel induced stress causing blow up arguments. I even began making a list of excuses to avoid the trip altogether. I mentioned my concerns generally to a friend of mine who has a little baby as well. She responded with congratulations and well wishes for the trip. And it occurred to me suddenly that I have become the biggest self-defeatist I know. Only seven months ago, baby and I flew to and from California, Pittsburgh and drove 6 hours to Tucson within a three month period. Nothing had stopped me before from spending entire days at the malls and restaurants in Milwaukee with my little k-bear. When did I develop this mental block in my mind with such fear of disaster? Just because things go wrong doesn't mean that disaster is pending. A bad incident can also be a memorable one if you survive it by rolling with the punches. I had to drop the wall completely and allow myself to roll with the punches. Suddenly, I had dreams of authentic Chinese cooking and stylish home decore. By Thursday, I felt like a teenager on her last day of class before spring break.

Unconventional Roles

This week Clay is away on a Kohler trip to London for 10 days. I'm not jealous at all because 10 days alone with baby means eating left overs the entire week straight, having total control over the remote and the computer, watching junky reality chick shows in defiant enjoyment, spending weekend time cleaning at my own pace and vegging at my own pace without interruption or interference. I know, you'd think Mr. Hubby was the biggest ogre to dominate a household. Only half true. The other truth of it is my own self imposed rules and restrictions.

The house needs to meet a certain minimal level of cleanliness. I used to expect this 7 days out of the week. I kept that up for maybe a month into our first year of living together. By the end of the stretch, I felt near suicidal while still waiting for him to follow up on a two week promise to wash the dishes. Hmmm. We didn't have a mechanical dishwasher at the time. Lately, I've parred it down to 4 days out of the week, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Wednesday, with one week per month off. Usually we have at least one super hectic week per month. Further, it is acceptable that the house be a total wreck on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Those usually follow the busiest days of the week.

When the baby was born, the demands piled on. Many not self imposed. I found myself cleaning nearly 15 bottles and accessories every other day, mixing, labeling, etc. The whole process would eat up 20 to 30 minutes out of my night. This doesn't seem like much, but considering the fact that we would arrive home by 6pm at the earliest and go to bed by 11pm, 30 minutes is a lot of time. K-bear and I would arrive home by 6:30pm. Immediately dropping groceries on the counter, K-bear would eat first. Then I'd start cooking dinner by 7 or 7:30pm. We would eat by 8 - 8:30, clean the dishes by 9pm, prep the bottles around 9 - 9:30, give baby her snack at 9:30, play with baby for 30 minutes on the floor, pick up stray items and get stuff ready for work the next day, put baby to bed between 10:30 and 11. I would have 15 precious minutes to myself which often I would prefer to spend in quiet solitude away from daddy's man-shows or the noise of the t.v. in general. The schedule was so hectic that I found myself skipping showers every other day and giving K-bear a bath only once a week. And I was only working full time on an hourly basis.

All came to a head when my boss proposed I switch to full time salaried billable hours working 5 more billable hours a week than I was currently making. The conflict I felt between the pursuit of my career and the needs of my family suddenly darkenned by the abysmal depth of the question to be answered. Where is the balance? Quickly the ugly word I had been hiding from since becoming a new parent started to lurk beyond the periphery: Compromise. I have been equating this word to failure and counter-survivalism. I had fought hard against three long years of depression in Sheboygan due to the difficulties of establishing my career and social network here. I fought hard to get to where I was and all of a sudden it was moving too fast.

I don't know if because of the traditional roles we play as men and women, husbands and wives that somehow the rising success of the wife is more challenging to a family than that of the husband. We can agree that until recent time, the working world has been a man's world. There should be no debate that if dad decides to head off to the bar and join his boss and coworkers for happy hour, he should do so in order to remain competitive. Never mind that Mr. Boss made the call at 5:30 p.m. or that dad forgot to call mom before 8pm because his cell phone was dead. The source of all their livelihood hinged on this good social raport. It becomes business as usual. Daddy stumbles home, dinner's in the microwave, baby's playing on the floor, t.v. remote's where it always is, and the dogs are all lick ready. All mom really wants to hear at this point is, "Thanks honey, you did a great job with the house and the baby. I really appreciate your hard work. Food's delicious. I'm so glad to be home."

When mom experiences rising success and increased demands from work, I wonder whether it would be acceptable for her to call dad past 7pm to inform him that she is currently at a bar with her co-workers and boss. That she may be snacking on appetizers to avoid drinking on an empty stomach and that she won't be super hungry when she gets home. Just stick the food in the fridge for lunch. She'll be back no later than 8:30. Daddy may have to watch the kids again tonight. It shouldn't be a big deal that she didn't call sooner. After all, the livelihood of the family hinges on this job and she has to do what is expected of her to remain competitive. It's really beyond her control and she should not be punished for complying with the social demands of her job. I wonder which situation would lead to divorce faster.

It was tough figuring out the right decision for myself and my family. How do you say "Thanks but no thanks" to your boss who's offering you a promotion and a raise? What will happen to your reputation in the small legal community of Sheboygan if you move backwards in your first year of introduction. What's a debutant to do? Ultimately I reflected upon the lives of the people I most respected whom I considered to be most successful. I also reflected on the lives of those whom I thought failed in making the right choices in life. In all cases, the right decisions pointed towards the center. The center being based on love and those people whom should be most important in one's life. In mine were my family and my daughter. I needed for them to be the focus of my spiritual center if I had any real hopes for success and balance. The decision then became clear and easy.

Watching Anthony Bourdaine travel through New York, Vietnam and South America, his videolog of hot pot chicken feet, fresh caught ocean king fish grilled over a make shift grill, and the famous Noodle Lady of Hanoi makes my left brain salivate. All of a sudden, I wish I was home buying fish from the tank and stoking the fire on the grill. I wish also that I could hug my grandmother one more time and sit on the kitchen floor poking little peanuts into our peanut cookie batter. I want to bring the loves of my life into today recreating joyful moments that are at risk of being lost to the past. The lack of flavors in my life at this time is debilitating.

Woman In Transition

I think that I must have an angel near bye who hears my inner turmoil and wants to tell me that things will be fine because my fortune cookies have been dead on these past few weeks. I am a thirty three year old mother, attorney. Or is it attorney, mother? In one sweeping year, I became both. One better than the other, depending on my mood and the circumstances that compel my attention at any particular time. Lately, I feel as though I am grasping at straws trying to be the best at both as I am only starting off my career path in both. Like a manic sidewinder on crack, I do the two steps backwards and forward every time I think about what tomorrow brings. For now, my focus consists of being the best at entertaining and feeding my skinny little eleven month old daughter while finding time for creative intellectual pursuits on my computer, preventing one from colliding into the other, literally. She really loves to smash on my computer.

I live in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a place that is as much of a conundrum as its name. For a little blue collar factory town so off the beaten track, we manage to make it on the national news at least once a year, garnering Hollywood recognition on the Colbert Report at one point for the ridiculous story about a little boy stuck in a gumball machine. Yes, it occurred at Lakeshore Lanes, a ten minute walk from my house.

My husband and I moved to Wisconsin to pursue a position offered to him at Kohler, Co. as an industrial designer for their Bathing Department. He has already become an award winning shower designer in only the four years since our arrival, since his second year of being a designer fresh out of school. Kohler has a great corporate culture, if you have the capacity to succeed. The resources are there for you, your goals are laid out before you and the expectations are clear. The hardest part to succeeding at Kohler is overcoming your own personal limitations, including aversion to extremely long and cold winters, codependent need for quality like minded singles, and an inability to adapt to ugly predated fashion. If these issues combined do not incapacitate you, then Kohler is your oyster.

Underneath the veil of white snow, Sheboygan County is a composition of subcultures. There is the local Hmong culture that keeps to themselves, the towny-RV culture who travel but don't fly, the Harley bikers versus weekend riders, towny-over 50 married white male at the lonely bar scene culture, drug dealers, drug users, drug lords, prostitutes & their pimps, tatoo artists, day shifters, night shifters, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Unitarians, home grown artists, home grown academics and intellectuals, out-of-towners but in-staters, out-of-towners and out-of-staters, the A-list elite executives and professionals, the B-list white collar mid-level professionals, the C-list college graduate starter professional, and out-of-town out-of-stater out-of-town-in-stater spouses of all of the above.

I finished my last day of law school December 20, 2005 with the promise of publication from Standford Environmental Law Journal and an application for the patent bar in my pocket. November we found out that we would be relocating to Sheboygan, Wisconsin to start our new lives as married professionals. Start our new lives as a family. Surviving both east and west coasts for all our lives, there was no question that we would make it big in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
We were big fish in a small pond. We would be in control of our lives finally for the first time. We were moved by our own momentum. Looking back, there was no way for me to have predicted nor prepared for the changes that were to come.