Confessions of a Former Workaholic: My Multi-Step Program for “Getting a Life”

“That is what entrepreneurs do: they pair imagination with action and move boldly and often joyfully in the direction of a vision only they can see.” –Meg Cadoux Hirshberg

Heidi, age 1 1/2, growing up in the home office

When one of my editors at SUCCESS  magazine asked me to review Meg Cadoux Hirshberg’s new book, For Better or For Work: A Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs and Their Families, I really had no idea what I was getting into.  I’ve read some life-changing books as a result of my work as a reviewer, but this one wasn’t so much life-changing as life-enlightening.  I literally spent the first 20 pages or so weeping.

In case you only know Hirshberg as a columnist for Inc. Magazine, let me enlighten you. She is also the wife of Stonyfield Farm yogurt founder Gary Hirshberg, the man who singlehandedly swept Meg and their three children through almost a decade of chaos because of his pursuit of a dream—to bring organic yogurt to the world. (Yes, they’re still married.)

What got me weeping over Hirshberg’s book was how hard it hit home, as in hit me right in the gut with all the not so polite things I’ve done to the people I was supposed to love while building a career as a writer. Granted, I’m no Gary Hirshberg and never will be. I have only one employee and a handful of sometime freelance designers and writers who work when I need them (or when I can afford them).  But the smallness of my entrepreneurial ventures belies the brutality of my pursuit of them.

I came by my workaholism honestly enough.  It’s in the family bloodline.  Both of my grandfathers were entrepreneurs, as were their fathers before them. My dad and my uncle were small business owners, too.  And none of us have ever stood authority well.  It’s just plain safer for us to be self-employed.  So I don’t think it was really any great surprise to anyone (regardless of how crazy they thought I was) when I decided to dump life in the corporate world to pursue a career as a freelance writer. And, at the time, I was young and single.  There’s really nothing wrong with being a workaholic in those circumstances because the only person you’re going to hurt is yourself.

But in walked my husband-to-be about two years into this grand venture of mine.  You would have thought, when he asked me to marry him, and I replied matter-of-factly, “Okay, but realize my work will always come first,” that he would have taken a quick hike for the hills.  Why he didn’t I’ll never know.  I can only guess that he perhaps did not believe me.

"On assignment" with Mommy at Antietam National Battlefield

All was well the first few years.  He was in the military, was overseas through much of the early years of our marriage, and I continued on with my work and my life, almost as if I was still single.  I worked 80-hour weeks, stayed up till the wee hours of the morning, fielded phone calls from West Coast and overseas clients, publicists, and reporters at all hours of the night. I lived and breathed my work.  It was like a drug to me.  I admit it: I inhaled.  And as my income doubled year after year after year, the addiction grew ever stronger. But it really wasn’t the money, as many an entrepreneur will tell you. It was the adrenaline rush of getting up every day to do something I truly loved doing and being able to pay the bills doing it.

Work-life balance was not something I worried about.  And it didn’t even really occur to me that I needed any such balance until I became pregnant five years ago.  That was the beginning of the wake-up call.  I started to feel I might have a bit of a problem on my hands when doing phone conferences with mock enthusiasm while trying to stem my nausea by sucking on ginger candy and drinking peppermint tea. Then a month-long bout of bronchitis hit.  But still I plowed through, grateful for that first pregnancy advantage of not really showing, at least not until I hit eight months.  I told no one, fearful clients and publishers would drop me if they knew I was expecting, figuring I would be one of those mothers who gave up her career after childbirth.

At six months, I installed fence line on my farm alone in the heat of summer, shoveled gravel on a flood torn driveway, kept hiking and practicing yoga up until (I kid you not) the very day I went into labor.  And yes, I took off early that day, at 4 p.m., because I felt a little funny.  Once I realized I was having contractions, ever the perfectionist, I got in the shower, shaved my legs while timing the contractions with a stopwatch, and had my husband (who had scheduled a brief leave around my due date) drive me to the hospital at the close of the workday.  I was in labor for 31 hours, and 72 hours later was back at my desk again, trying to schedule interviews around my newborn daughter’s nursing schedule.

The perks of being the travel writer's daughter: luxury hotel living

Within three months, despite the foresight I had exercised in hiring an assistant, I was half crazy from trying to do it all without missing a beat.  My husband was overseas, my business was running at tilt neck speed, and I was discovering that, despite the admonitions from the home nurse who came to visit after Heidi was born, that spending 12 hours a day breastfeeding as a self-employed mother on deadline was just not feasible.

“You realize if you keep this up, you are going to kill yourself,” my doula told me about two months after Heidi’s birth.

Yep, I realized it.  The workaholic was going to have to give some ground.

My retreat from super woman to the woman who admitted that having it all was slightly impossible began with hiring a babysitter, giving up breastfeeding, and asking for help, including a desperate phone call to a neighbor late one night after having been awake three days straight with my daughter who was suffering from the diaper rash case from hell.  That was the night I briefly and seriously considered leaving my daughter in a basket on someone’s doorstep and driving my car into a tree.  Sleep deprivation does that to a person.  My neighbor arrived in 10 minutes with a steaming hot supper of lamb, rice, and homemade muffins, rocked my little one to sleep, and told me I could go take a shower.  A shower!  A shower without setting Heidi outside the glass shower door in her bouncy seat so I could watch her all the while.  A real, self-indulgent steaming hot shower!

So this was motherhood….

I was overworked and under-prepared.  And I thought relief would come when my husband retired from the military eight months after our daughter was born.  And it did to some degree.  Finally there was someone with whom to share the late night feedings, someone who could take morning duty and let me sleep in once in awhile.  And it worked…for awhile.

Hiking through Milam Gap with contributing outdoors editor "Mommy"

But you see, my husband had forgotten that pre-marriage admonition that work comes first, and like Meg Hirshberg and countless other entrepreneurs’ spouses, he began to feel like the stepchild to some half-mad person’s crazy dream.  He didn’t understand why, when he would come into my office, I would shoo him away with a wave of my hand while on the phone, act disgruntled when he interrupted my train of thought while writing an article, or fail to fully appreciate the lunch he brought me in the middle of the day because he had learned I would just keep working and forget all the body’s basic needs in the process.  I was aggravated that he expected me to stop and chat with him when I passed through the kitchen on the way from the office to the bathroom.  I had two minutes before my next phone call after all.  For him, however, it was rejection on a grand scale.  It never occurred to him that he enjoyed this access to me only because my office was connected to my home.  I resented the fact that he took advantage of the access, threatened many times to rent office space in town to get away from all the interruptions.

When the ever evolving media world began to demand my time 24-7, and I realized I was going to have to do a better job of being on call at night, on vacation, everywhere, I broke down and bought a Blackberry.  Now everyone could reach me by phone and e-mail all the time.  I’d never miss an assignment or contract opportunity again.  It also meant that while my husband and daughter played in the waves on the beach, I was answering e-mails.  I was relatively okay with this.  I was, after all, sitting on a nearly vacant beach with the sun going down behind me, my toes pressed into wet sand.  But my spouse didn’t quite see it that way.  Every time my phone went off (and it went off pretty much constantly), he would grumble.  I tried to soothe him by saying, “it’s the sound of money, dear, remember that.”

He threatened to heave my smartphone out the car window.  Meanwhile, I saw the Blackberry, among other things, as an investment not just in my business but in my family’s future—pay off the mortgage, send Heidi to college, take fantastic family vacations, enjoy a superb retirement.

Like the Hirshbergs, we were misinterpreting each other left and right.  I felt my space as a businessperson was being disrespected.  He thought his role as caregiver to two thankless females was being taken for granted.

No one was going to win this battle because, in the end, both of us were wrong.

But I was wrong first, and I knew it.  Because the reality is if you put work before everything else, including your own sanity, you will, eventually, crash and burn, and you might even take a few onlookers with you.

I realized I needed an intervention.  And it started with closing my office door, even though it was right there next to the kitchen, at 5 p.m.  Sometimes I could hear the phone ringing, but I learned to ignore it (with a few relapses involving me tiptoeing into the office to check my voicemail “just in case”).  I programmed my Blackberry so that my most crucial editors and clients had their own individual ring tones, as did my closest friends.  Unless I heard those ring tones, if I was on vacation, playing with my daughter, sitting in a whirlpool bath, I ignored the persistent “bling, bling, bling.”  Sometimes I even dared to turn the sound off completely.

A moment of silliness at Dukes Creek Falls while on assignment for Disney's FamilyFun

Then I began taking dance classes, taking on cardio combined with camaraderie.  In the last four years, the women I have met in those classes have become like a second family to me, as have their daughters to my daughter.  Twice a week, I pummel my stress with intense dancing and laughter, and I do not pick up my phone.  In fact, I cannot even hear it in the midst of the music and tom foolery.

I’ve still not learned to turn off the phone when on vacation.  I don’t really feel I can. As a writer, my business is me.  But I check it less.  I sometimes even turn it off completely at night or at least put it on “silent.”  I keep it tucked away in my purse when out with friends, generally cut if off completely between 5:30 and 7:30 each weeknight, the two hours I try to devote to Heidi with attention undivided.

But I am not cured, by any means.

I realize that having arrived as a writer has won me some space from my business.  Most of my editors will wait for me.  They will not give up and hand assignments to someone else just because I don’t answer their e-mails in two minutes.  I am close enough to the best of them that they respect my time when I say I’m going on vacation and do not bother me.  Some even admonish me when they see me responding to work e-mails on weekends.  And because I’m not engaged so much in business building these days as business maintaining, it’s not a tragedy if I do indeed miss some project because my phone was turned off.

I don’t know as my husband ever really understood the Siren Song that lured me (and continues to lure me) to work sometimes ridiculous hours and to travel as often as twice a month to places ranging from the wilds of Alaska to the islands of the Pacific.  He learned, after a time, to accept it all, perhaps gave into the role of second or third best.  My daughter, on the other hand, has grown up in the throes of the business, understands, even at age four, many of the strange complexities of her mother’s life.  “When I am big, will you take me on adventures with you?” she asks.  “When do we get to go on an airplane together again?”  For her, my world is one of excitement. And she longs to join in on the fun.

This is not to say, however, the road with her has not been rocky.  Through a strange twist of circumstance, my business was at its most demanding level in the years surrounding her birth.  She was three years old before I felt I had bonded with her.  And sometimes she still cries when I work on Saturdays, out of necessity to meet Monday morning news deadlines, and leave her to play with her LEGOs and Thomas the Train alone.  But on some level, because she has grown up with it, she gets its.

As I hurry to prepare for a morning meeting, she stands like a soldier next to the shower, my skirt in hand, ready to hand it over once I’ve pulled on my pantyhose.  My phone goes off, and she grabs it, rushes it to me like a trained personal assistant, watches as I scroll through e-mails, then takes it back, and scrolls through them herself.

Have I brought her into some ill landscape where deadlines reign supreme?  Perhaps.  Only time will tell.  But on some level, she knows, since she was born into the world of the entrepreneur, that life and work, for me, conjoin and separate like waves pressing the beach.  It’s all jumbled together at times. And that is, in the end, what makes my world so incredibly lovely—that my work and my life are one.  I do not watch the clock, live for Fridays at 5 p.m., or dread Monday mornings like an Egyptian plague.  No, I catch the wake of a ship with my kayak and ride it as the sun settles, being at one and the same time at work and at play.  I will write about this afternoon on Lake Superior with a storm drifting in, but I will also remember it as a moment of living—living my life and living my dream…and teaching my daughter, by example, the art of working, not for money, but for love.

I have a life now, separate from work.  But it took me many years to get it.  And I often wonder, as I lie awake at night thinking about the week’s deadlines, if I’d have it had I not finally figured out how to fit 80 hours of work into 25 or 30.  Am I really cured after all?  Or has success just dampened my thirst?

It is, perhaps, hard to say, but I do know that if work demanded of me now what it demanded of me years ago–to give up (or at least set aside for a time) the people I loved most in the world, the leisure time I had envisioned all this work earning me to begin with, or the freedom to live my life on my own terms–I’d be a damn sight less inclined to take it on.  Because while I do indeed work for love, I also work for a living.  And right now, I’m pretty darn busy living.

Yelling Into the Men’s Room

If I was asked today if I could choose one word that encapsulates parenthood, I would have to choose the word “transition.”  It seems like how I handle the never ending changes in my life and my children’s lives is a great predictor of how I’ll fare in this day-to-day journey called ‘parenthood.’

Transitions began even before the moment our first child was born and officially entered our lives. As any parent knows, the minute you know you are pregnant, your outlook begins to change.  In fact, even earlier than that for me.  As soon as we transitioned our marriage to the ‘let’s start trying’ stage, a paradigm shift occurred.

And as many books as I’ve read, websites that I’ve scoured, and parenting groups that I’ve joined, there are moments that make me believe that it’s impossible to always be ready for what’s ahead.  One moment that I’ll never forget was when I was blindsided by a transition moment in Target one afternoon.

As never fails to happen, the minute my kids and I were buried in the back of the store, the farthest corner away from the restroom, my son had to go to the bathroom.  I was relishing a few moments of retail therapy in the bedding section, imagining how a new duvet really would inspire me to keep my dresser cleared off.  Perhaps such a nicely appointed bed would even get my husband to put his clothing in the hamper.

Trying not to be annoyed about being torn away from bed linen therapy, I grabbed my son’s hand, tossed my daughter in the cart, and got the three of us to the front of the store in record time. Out of breath, I abandoned my cart, picked up my daughter and dashed into the women’s room.  Ignoring my hard and fast germ phobic rule, “the stall at the farthest end of the row is the cleanest,” I blasted into the first stall, announcing our arrival with a resounding crash. Standing in the germiest of all stalls, I suddenly realized my son hadn’t followed me. I came out of the women’s room just in time to see the men’s room door close like the jaws of a trap.  I called his name, and lunged toward the door labeled “Men.”

I stopped myself.  What was I doing? I had almost walked into the men’s room, four-year-old daughter in tow.  Is that illegal? If not illegal, certainly over the top.  My son was simply taking a right of passage, one that I didn’t see coming.

I knew then, as I do now, that for a boy to choose to use the Men’s Room instead of following his mother into the Women’s Room was developmentally appropriate, but it was still a tough moment.

I lingered outside the door, probably a little too close.  I was trying to look casual, like I belonged twelve inches from the men’s room door, holding an overstuffed mommy purse and a squirrely four-year-old.  I feigned intent interest in examining the restroom maintenance check list.  I conjured up a curiously strong concern as to why “Y.N.” had not initialed the square for ‘checked soap dispensers’ at 8.  I was appalled to see that from 9:30 am until 10:45, the men’s room had been completely neglected with absolutely no initials in any of the little boxes.  Is this an issue for customer service?  Perhaps I should write down the 1-800 number listed below the “If these restrooms do not meet our high standards, please do not hesitate to contact us.”

But, my gosh, my son was still not out.  He was breathing in that air, no doubt touching things, in the less than perfectly maintained restroom.  His soap dispenser may not be full since employee “Y.N.” had been slacking on the job.  I was beginning to sweat.  And I had absolutely exhausted all material of interest anywhere near the men’s room door.

I was beginning to look a bit conspicuous.

How hard could I push my agenda on this one?  How much closer to the boldly lettered MEN sign on the door could I hover without looking like a Wack-O?  I imagined all the possible scenarios that could be going on during the 65 seconds since he had left me.  There are such perverts in this world.  Every horrible scenario flashed though my head.  I wished I had told him just one more time not to talk to anyone or touch anything, or even look at anyone.

But these moments rarely lend themselves to that last heart to heart.

Knowing full well that I was humiliating myself, I yelled through the door once, just once, “Everything OK in there?”  No one answered my call–probably a good thing.

A man walked through the door drying his hands on his jeans and almost tripped over me.  With a stumbling man as my cover to distract anyone who could have been watching, I stretched my neck to get a look inside.  Nothing.  Then I almost went for it.  Images of a desperate mom bolting through the men’s room door still haunt me.
Suddenly, Dylan nonchalantly came out.  To me, it was as if he had just taken his first wobbly step, or was stage bound, marching to Pomp and Circumstance, or walking down the aisle to Mendelssohn, new bride on his arm.

OK, so maybe it wasn’t exactly that big, but it was definitely a moment.

I knew that as he stepped over that threshold labeled “Men’s,” he was a little closer to becoming one himself.  I was relieved that I had given him the space to make that transition. After all, if I couldn’t let go, how silly would I look in the years to come, escorting him on one of those other important walks?  Not to mention the obvious that one of us would run into trouble with the law if we didn’t get the public restroom thing worked out.

There’s a theory in potty training and reading-readiness that one must ‘strike while the iron’s hot’ so to speak.  I guess it really applies to all transitions for children.  When a child feels ready, it’s important to support and encourage. If I had given my son the message that he wasn’t old enough to go into the men’s room, he would have received a ‘no confidence’ vote.

I’m not naive enough to think that I haven’t made bad judgment calls many times since then.  And I know there will be many times in the future when I do cross what’s become to me the proverbial ‘threshold to the men’s room.’  After all, kids still need boundaries and guidelines, and it’s a tricky line to walk.

But the older my children get, the more difficult these boundaries become.  Movies, sleep overs, music, parties, driving, dates.   They ask to do more, they’re more capable, they understand more, and they present better arguments.

Just this afternoon I had to explain to my eight-year-old daughter why she couldn’t sell Girl Scout Cookies up the street on her own.  When the obvious “because its unsafe and you’re not old enough” didn’t carry enough weight, I finally resorted to the old standby, “’Cause I’m your mom and that’s my rule” line.  When the predictable retort, “But Claudia’s mom let’s her,” was delivered, I resorted to another old standby, “Well, Claudia’s mom must love her daughter more than I love you.”  The discussion was over.  To resort to sarcasm was an even lower blow, and we both knew it.  Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

And though I don’t think there’s much of a chance of my daughter selling door to door to strangers any time soon, sometimes I do just have to take a step back and revisit the men’s room door.

How I Stopped Hating Paris…and Started Loving the Unscheduled Life

My daughter drawing leisurely in Venice

As I sat on the steps outside the Musee d’Orsay, listening to the click and swish of the street performers’ roller skates,  it sadly dawned on me that I would once again miss the inside of the museum.  No wandering through the majestic corridors or getting lost in the muted colors of Monet, Manet, Degas or Renoir.

Instead, just a few yards away from the museum entrance, I was sitting on grotty steps, watching a pair of street performers, one testing the limits of roller skates and the other whose gig was to mock innocent passersby.  My kids were reduced to falling over in giggles every time an unsuspecting tourist was victimized.  It was entertaining, but I couldn’t deny the call of the French Impressionists.  I was counting down until closing time.  Thirty eight minutes left.  How had inertia anchored me here, in Paris of all places?

You see, I had never liked Paris.  The only reason I came this time was out of a sense of duty.  My husband loved Paris, and since he couldn’t join us on this part of the trip, I felt compelled to include Paris in our summer itinerary.  It was a nod in his direction, a feeble recognition of what he had done to make this trip possible.  After we had traveled together for the past month in Spain and Morocco, he flew home, and the kids and I headed off to get a taste of the rest of Europe, wandering through five weeks of Germany, France, Italy, and Austria.  My husband acted as our ‘stateside support ,’ researching hotels, making reservations, and paying the bills, of course.

So it was just the kids and me.  And Paris.  Which I hated. I hated the rainy weather, the expensive food, and the unfriendly shopkeepers.   And I hated the promise of Paris.  The romance.  The lure of the Eiffel Tower.   This was my fourth trip to Paris, and I again swore it would be my last.

My kids with crepes in Paris

The first time I was in Paris, I was in high school.  It was the spring break language trip.  The weather was chilly, and my experience couldn’t compare to that of my Spanish-studying classmates who were spending a fabulous time on the sultry Iberian Peninsula.  Not yet 21 and under the constant scrutiny of chaperones, I and my classmates couldn’t even find much pleasure in the realization that wine was, in fact, cheaper than Coke.  And it was more than just the Coke that seemed expensive on a babysitter’s budget.  Even though it was the 90s, and the Euro had not yet taken over, I probably only had a few hundred bucks for the week.  That could last one meal in a metropolitan city like Paris and wouldn’t get me very far in the much anticipated French boutiques.  Even kitschy souvenir shopping, which suite my budget better, was a lackluster experience.  The unaccommodating shopkeepers rebutted my attempts at speaking diligently practiced high school French.  Either I received a blank stare or a curt, tight-lipped, “Excuse me?” in perfect English.

My second foray among the Parisians was definitely a notch up.  It was a 21-day, whirlwind tour of Europe with my mother and sister.  I could enjoy the cheap wine, had a bit more money to shop, and relaxed at many mediocre pre-arranged meals.  But my memories are vague.  It was a quick trip.  Eiffel Tower, Monaco Casinos, Coliseum, Venice Canals, the Alps, Schoenborn Palace, Goldenes Dachl, Neuschwanstein Castle. . .just like the movie.

I haven’t thought of my third trip to Paris in years.  I guess I’ve blocked it out.  That time, I was in my final semester of college, doing my student teaching at an English-speaking school in Germany.  A group of us drove to Paris for the weekend.  Imagine that.  Driving to Paris for the weekend. I do remember being distinctly impressed with the compactness and ease of travel afforded to the Europeans. But I was once again not impressed with Paris. This time, I was too hung up on love.  As I stood on the precipice of Place du Trocadero, with a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower at night, I was with a man with whom I was less than in love.  As I tried to force a meager enthusiasm for my date, I vowed never to return to Paris without genuine love.  I can’t remember the details, but there were probably a few forced kisses.  After all, we were in Paris.  It was our last date.

My daughter boat pushing in Paris

But this trip was different.  Finances and weather weren’t going to put a damper on this journey.  I was ready to take on Paris.  I was armed with a rain coat, a few umbrellas, and weather proof shoes.  I had plenty of cash and credit.   Of course, with two kids, I was not remotely interested in sitting through a five-course meal for three hours or shopping in expensive boutiques, but I could comfortably order a meal in a restaurant for the three of us and buy as many Eiffel Tower key rings as we could carry.

The rudeness of Paris didn’t faze me this time either.  Paris is just another big city.  I don’t think Parisians are particularly more discourteous than those residing in other big cities of the world.  Sure, there’s a bit more snobbery in Paris.  Though, at this point in my life, after having crossed the globe a few times, I would give a bit more leeway for Parisian snobbery.  It is an impressive city.  I guess I also have a tougher skin.  Curtness doesn’t bother me as much anymore.   I myself have become more practiced at stone cold stares.  I was an eighth grade school teacher, have been married for thirteen years, and have a ten and an eight year old. Sarcasm, silent stares, and snooty looks are just a few of the nasty tricks that I’ve acquired.  I can raise an eyebrow with a snide lip as good as any Parisian.

And finally, love was no longer an issue.  I had traded in my glass slippers for Saucony running shoes, with an occasional high-heeled black leather boot slipped on for fun.  Stability, fidelity, and the rewards for working at love were now my priorities.  It’s not that my life had become devoid of romance, but that it no longer needed the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower.  A simple Saturday morning when the kids slept past 6:30 and we had a few more minutes together would kindle a romantic trajectory that would last through waffles, soccer, an afternoon birthday party and grilled burgers, until the kids were tucked in for the night. At that point, Eiffel Tower or not,  we may or may not find ourselves too tired to go on.

So that’s where I found myself in Paris for the fourth time.  My conditions were different, but in my estimation, the city hadn’t changed.  Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur, Tour Eiffel, and of course, the Louvre.

We had spent a  morning in the Louvre.  It was a brief visit.  We rented the museum guides, walked around for a few hours, and ended up in the Louvre café.  I knew the next five weeks would be full of museums, cathedrals, palaces, and long walks.  Spending only four hours in the Louve felt like a travesty to me, but the goal of the trip wasn’t to present a concise history of Eastern and Western civilization gleaned from a museum.  Instead, it was merely to launch the kids on a life of travel.  Two days or even one full day in the Louvre is certainly not the most effective way to infect them with the travel bug.

We walked out of the museum and found ourselves in the Tuileries Gardens.  Little did I know that this path would set the tone for the rest of our summer.

Slinging wet pea stones in their wake, both children raced down the garden path to the man with the toy boat cart. They begged for a boat. Exhausted, I collapsed on a chair by the concrete pool.   I knew there was a lot more of Paris to see over the next five days, and I suppressed the nagging guilt I felt about ‘giving up’ for the afternoon.

It was two Euros to rent a boat for an hour.  The children were given a pole and a boat with a sail.  The French-speaking boat peddler, a strange but satisfyingly friendly cross between a gentle grandfather and a homeless man, was accommodating, letting the children choose their boat, suggesting the fastest boats among his collection, and helping them with their first launch.

At that moment, although I wanted to keep hating Paris, I felt my grip loosening.  This distaste had taken years to cultivate.  I wouldn’t even deign a meal in a French restaurant back home if I could avoid it.  It was simply a principal to me now:  a snobbery about being snobby.

But this moment challenged every bit of Paris that I found detestable.  It was friendly, accommodating, and an undeniably good deal.  I had more than two content children, a reclining chair by the fountain, and a spectacular view in every direction.  As I sat there for the afternoon, sometimes lost in my thoughts and much of the time thinking nothing at all, I realized I had never let myself completely go in Paris.  I had posed for pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower, bartered for the prerequisite Eiffel Tower key rings, and had hung on to a Sorbonne University t-shirt, buried somewhere in my bottom drawer at home.  But I had never released my Type A American intensity to become a part of the scenery.

As I melted into the background of tourists photos, I began to see how unimaginably beautiful the city was.  How had I missed this on my visits to Paris?  I started to look around, to notice the architecture.  I absorbed the dampness of the gardens, imbued with the graceful sculptures and aged trees that have literally seen history unfold.   And as I sat there, I even began to dismiss the quirky ways of the Parisians, and appreciate the annoyance of the pandering demanded by tourists.

Of course, it did rain for a few minutes that afternoon, but somehow it didn’t matter.  The wind and brief moments of pelting rain made the boating all that much more exciting.

I realized that traveling with children affords a certain amount of freedom.  Freedom to sit and watch the street performers instead of wandering through high-ceilinged galleries.  Freedom to eat crepes for lunch.  Freedom to skip the afternoon at the Louvre with the great masters, and instead, become one of the scenes of the great masters:  Boy Pushing Boat at Fountain.

As I sat there, I also realized I had never really thought of the goal of our trip. After all, what goal do you need when you’ll be spending the summer in Europe?  Pictures of us for the Christmas card in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canal, and at the top of the Alps?   But maybe it was about more.  As I watched tourists take photos of children, my children, push-boating in the fountain, maybe this trip was destined to be one where we didn’t see everything, but we instead became a part of everything.

I never did make it into the Musee d’Orsay that afternoon, but I did make the conscious choice to become a part of every place we visited.  No check lists, ‘top ten’ lists, or ‘must see’ sights.

Instead, we visited the same little pizza shop in Rome almost every afternoon and got to know the owner’s name and all about his family.  Each kid had their favorite stool and type of pizza.

My son drawing in Venice

We went hiking in the Alps with a German family that my daughter had befriended on the train, spending the next two days sharing meals, Prosseco, and the common struggles of raising kids, balancing work and family, and the German perspective on the dilemma in financial markets.

We fed the pigeons at Notre Dame, scattering our leftover baguette from lunch. We never made it to the top of the bell tower in Notre Dame, but no one complained about missing it.  They did complain when we ran out of bread, and then the birds wouldn’t eat the gummy candy they foisted on them.

I did my share of eating too—from croissants to gelato.  I even ate brats and drank beer at a playground in Kaiserslautern, and at every other playground I found after that day that served them.

There were poignant moments, too.  Things came up that I wouldn’t have necessarily brought up with my kids.  At the bus stop for the Appian Way, we talked with a Roman who was fiercely racist, protecting his job and lifestyle from North African immigrants.  The children listened quietly, and after we parted from him, we spent many hours talking about racism, prejudice, jobs, and country, as we walked from one catacomb to the next.

In Venice, we passed an afternoon with a researcher who was working on an international project on chickens.  She was studying how interbreeding chickens actually made them more resistant to disease, more attractive, and provided a lower mortality rate.  The children didn’t miss connecting her research to our Appian Way talks about racism and prejudice.

Of course, I could go on.  There were so many moments of connections.  But this year, although our Christmas card did contain the requisite posed picture in front of a recognized site, it also showed a snapshot of my daughter sketching by the canals of Venice and my son pushing his boat with a pole, raggedy boat-man in the background.  I’m not in the photo of course, but I can see my empty green chair, reclining by the fountain pool, where I was sitting when I became a part of the background of Paris.

The One Four-Letter Word You Won’t Hear in My House

My assistant tells me I curse too much. She has advised me that perhaps I should make a New Year’s resolution to curse less. Even my husband says there are times when my language could rival any sailor’s.

Are you surprised?

If you know me in my professional incarnation, perhaps you are. I am calm and cool as can be when on the phone or in an interview with an editor, publisher, or client—the epitome of professionalism and courtesy. And it’s not an act. No, it feels perfectly natural to be accommodating and kind to the people who pay my bills.

But once the phone is hung up, the deadlines are looming eerily, and the wireless office network has decided yet again to go on strike, the four-letter words start pouring out like spilled coffee. And pretty soon, the office is resounding with phrases that would make my mother cower in shame and which, fortunately, make my assistant devolve into giggles.

However, there is one four-letter word that is off limits, a word I never speak, a word I never allow anyone I care about to speak. And that’s can’t. If you want to get me really fired up, just say “I can’t” within earshot.

Even my four-year-old daughter knows this word is taboo. She knows if she makes the error of saying it while trying to put a floor puzzle together, she’ll be the recipient of Mommy’s so-called “look of death” and will receive no empathy whatsoever, just a tirade on how there is no such thing as “I can’t,” that she can put that puzzle together all by herself, that she will put it together, and that she will do so without any help from mommy. Silence and diligence ensue. 20 minutes later…Disney princess puzzle completed, and a delighted, “Look, Mommy, I did it!”

I’m not sure where my aversion to can’t came from. My mother would likely contend I’ve hated the word since at least age 2 since my common response to her telling me, “No, you can’t do that,” would be to do it anyway. And I’m afraid my husband would agree with her on that point. Both have since learned that “you can’t” is like giving me a call to action—some sort of weird reverse psychology phenomena that makes me dig my heels in and pursue whatever action I’m being told I cannot pursue.

But what can you expect? I come by this honestly enough. Raised by Midwestern Lutherans of Scandinavian descent, I have to say that bullheadedness is part of my cultural inheritance. You can’t live in a part of the country where the announcement that it’s 20 degrees below zero with the wind chill factored in results in a response like, “Well, I sure am glad it’s warmed up today,” without being stubborn. Stubborn is the key to survival, as is doing the seemingly impossible—like hauling your truck out of a half frozen lake after an ice fishing expedition gone bad or shoveling the front walk with diligence despite the fact the snow is shoulder-high.

Yet there were times in my life when I was tempted to succumb to the words “you can’t” and almost did—like when some of my most admired college professors scoffed at the idea I wanted to be a writer, thinking I’d be far better off pursuing an academic career instead, or when I decided to build a house on a shoulder of the appropriately named “Snowy Mountain” with a near mile-long driveway with a 300 ft. elevation gain. I didn’t listen, and that willfulness has made all the difference in my life.

Perhaps that’s why, when I hear people I love say, “I can’t,” I get all fired up. To me, those words speak grief. They say that what we want or need is impossible to have. They say, “I’ve given up. I’m not capable. I don’t believe. The opportunity has passed me by.”

Yet listen, and you’ll hear these words spoken all the time, and you never hear them in the context of anything good.

A friend of mine said to me recently, “My job is high stress, exhausting. I’d love to do something else, but it pays well, so I can’t quit. I have to provide for my family.”

Then an editor acquaintance told me she and her husband dream of selling all their possessions and moving to Paris, “but we can’t,” she lamented. “We have a toddler.”

I find myself scratching my head at these statements, wondering what they mean. Is caring for one’s family incompatible with a rewarding and happy career? Does living in Paris mean one can’t have a child under age four? I don’t think so. I don’t really think it’s an issue of “I can’t.” I think it’s an issue of, boy, it would be a big change and a lot of trouble, and what if it’s not worth it in the end? Better just to stay here with what I’m doing where it’s nice and safe.

“I can’t” has nothing to do with ability or even guilt. It’s all about fear.

I’d be lying like crazy if I ever said I wasn’t afraid. I’m afraid a lot. I find myself facing fear on an almost daily basis on things ranging from terror of falling off that paddleboard into an icy cold river once I finally get the gumption to get off my knees and stand up to near paralyzing anxiety at the thought of overhauling my life for a better chance at happiness. And while, “I’m afraid!” will creep into my head, “I can’t” doesn’t.

Because it’s perfectly okay to be afraid.

The problem arises when we let fear keep us from living the lives we’re meant to live. We love to say we can’t do this or that because we don’t have enough money, don’t have enough time, because we’re too old, because it will disrupt the lives of our children or will make our friends and neighbors raise their eyebrows. Well, I have to report the following: You will never have enough money or time. You are never too old. And you will disrupt your children’s lives despite your best efforts not to. Plus, your friends and neighbors are always going to find something to raise their eyebrows over whether you give them cause or not.

Don’t wait until the time is right…because it never will be. There is always a ready excuse for failing to move to Paris, failing to start your own business, failing to leave that hateful job. Because living life is a bit like falling in love. You’re going to get burned a lot before you get it right, most likely, and the longer you wait to live the next chapter, the less time you have to make the climax, the conclusion your own.

Sometimes my 70-year-old father will lament that he’s never traveled to Alaska (though he’s always wanted to), that he’s never hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon (despite the fact it’s been on his bucket list for years), that he’ll never see a Norwegian fjord (even though he’s dreamed of it). When I ask him why, he’ll often say, “I’m too old,” or “your mother wouldn’t come,” or any other of a long list of excuses that really don’t suit the man who made me believe I really could understand trigonometry and, much later, was the only supporter of my biggest, wildest childhood dreams.

And I have to remind him, in reverse parent role, that his age is all the more reason to go and to go now. Because time is slipping, health is temporary, and the world is big. Don’t waste it living a life that isn’t yours.

A few weeks ago when I was visiting my family and was seated at the dinner table with my parents, my grandmother, and my daughter, my four-year-old pointed to my plate where I had left some of my mother’s very good but far too calorie-laden lasagna and said, “Mommy, you didn’t finish your dinner.”

She saw the injustice, as I was requiring her to finish hers. I smiled at her and replied, “I know, sweetie, but I’m all grown up, so I can do what I want, and when you’re all grown up you can do exactly what you want to do, too.”

My mother shot me a glance and said quickly, “No, you can’t.”

I looked back at her, the woman I’d willfully defied since childhood, not because I wanted to make her crazy but because I had a very definite vision of what I wanted from my life that she did not always share, and then turned to my daughter, and said, “Heidi, you can do whatever you want when you’re grown up, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”

My mother, wisely, said nothing. She and I had been down this road a thousand times before. And to be fair, I’ve had my doubts at times about what I can do. I always knew I’d be a writer, but I never dreamed in a million years I’d ever be able to buy a farm on it, build a house on it, support a family on it. That I’ve been able to I can only credit to one thing, and it’s neither ability nor intelligence—it’s a high dose of bullheadedness.

And perhaps it’s that bullheadedness that turns me into a spastic ball of adrenaline when the stakes are high, the deadlines are looming, and the life I want is so close I can taste it. I think my assistant knows this, so she tolerates it when the four-letter words come rolling off my tongue on one of those days when there is so much to accomplish in so little time. One four-letter word she knows she won’t hear is “can’t.”

Instead, I release my anxiety in a string of epithets and then get down to the business of doing what needs to be done. Because no matter how crazy, tragic, or overwhelming life becomes, I can meet it with strength, if not always grace, as long as I keep the end goal in mind. And when the time comes to take a wild leap of faith, I may not feel ready, but I’ll be damned if I’ll say, “I can’t.” Nope. The only valid response to meeting a challenge, an opportunity, a dream head-on is to say, “I can.” And then do it.

Life Lessons from a War Refugee

Old Town in Dubrovnik, Croatia

“Good for me, bad for them.” These were the words my friend and student Zehra, a 40-year-old mother of three, spoke to me as we sat together in her cramped apartment in Newport News, Virginia, 14 years ago and watched the words “Crisis in Kosovo” flash across the television screen.

It was a memory I thought was long forgotten until my European travels took me to the Dalmatian Coast of the former Yugoslavia where Zehra once lived a couple of days ago. Once the scene of ethnic cleansing on a scale not seen since the era of the Khmer Rouge, the multiple nation states carved out of the country Tito once held together by force has few signs of the conflicts that dominated news screens through much of the 1990s.

The otherworldly scene I watched that day flickering on the screen of Zehra’s television of Kosovars fleeing their homeland in overcrowded trains or cluttered into muddy fields without food or shelter was not unfamiliar to Zehra, a native of Bosnia-Herzegovina, who, through some act of fate I’ve yet to understand, became my English student – my most dedicated one, I might add.

As part of my graduate school training in teaching English as a second language, I was required to tutor someone. Having followed the conflict in the Balkans since I was a high school student and then again as a college student when my boyfriend served aboard a carrier in the Adriatic Sea, I chose to tutor a family of Bosnian refugees.

It was supposed to be a two-month endeavor. Somehow the experience moved beyond grad school project, and I became the Sulejmanovics’ private tutor and only American friend for nearly four years.

English is one of the world’s most complicated languages, and teaching concepts like silent “e’s” and diphthongs to a family whose native Serbo-Croatian language is entirely phonetic represented an unusual challenge. And often, the confusing, inaccurate Bosnian-English dictionary I relied on when nothing else seemed to work only compounded my difficulties.

But the Sulejmanovics were more patient with me than I was with them. They laughed at themselves and at me when I tried to repeat the Bosnian words they attempted with little success to teach me.  They showered me every visit with huge meals and introduced me to cheese burek and Bosnian style baklava. Always Zehra cooked in the style of the old country, keeping a 25-pound bag of flour in her kitchen pantry.

Their generosity to me was boundless, even when they had so little

For Zehra, seeing the Kosovars on TV that evening made her relive a nightmare past that I could neither begin to comprehend nor successfully console.

“It’s just the same,” she said to me, watching the terror-stricken faces of mothers with crying children. “The same.”

Zehra curled her arms to her breast and then with quivering lips described to me how Serbian police forced her family to abandon their home in Srebrenica, how she walked over the mountains in the snow with her youngest son in her arms.

“Mirsad,” she said, referring to her now pre-school age boy, “was only nine months old,” She began to cry. “Nine months old!”

She remembered bombs falling day and night, and her middle son Nedzad told me about the Serbian tanks rolling into town.

After leaving Srebrenica, the family lived in Tuzla for a time in a house with 25 other refugees, sharing one room with four other family members.

Understandably, she called her two-bedroom apartment in Newport News “big.”  Many of her neighbors down the dingy apartment hallway were refugees also. Some were Serbs, and she felt no malice for them. One was her dearest friend.

As is so often the case in war, those most injured by it have the least interest or investment in it.

When I last saw her, Zehra was working in a camera factory alongside her husband, Sevad, a former teacher with an astounding grasp of geography.  When Sevad, who felt out of place in theses strange surroundings where everyone seems to have money and where women are often as powerful as men, talked once of going home to Bosnia, Zehra clutched Mirsad to her and said she would stay in the United States, no matter what.

And she looked at me with soft brown eyes and then planted a kiss on Mirsad’s head – the baby she thought would never survive to attend American kindergarten.

Her gratitude to the twist of fate or act of God that brought her here was boundless, as was her devotion to those who helped her.

When I attended a parent-teacher conference with Zehra one evening and sat beside her as the teacher gave us glowing reports of Mirsad’s progress, Zehra looked at me, squeezed my knee, and said quietly, “My teacher.”

Weeks later, as she practiced the conjugation of English verbs with me, she said again with that affectionate and unforgettable smile, “I love my teacher.”

When Zehra came to the United States, she had only an eighth-grade education, could not speak a word of English, and had no employment skills. After four years of tutoring from her imperfect private teacher, she was outstripping her more educated husband in her understanding and speaking of the English language and her confidence in the new American landscape.

Until this week, Bosnia-Herzegovina seemed very far away to me, having long been absent from American television screens. It had dissipated from the radar the way war, conflict, and misery always do.  Whether or not the lessons (if there were indeed any) from the wars in the Balkans stick remains to be seen.  Prejudice, like family heirlooms, can be passed from generation to generation.

But not for Zehra.  If indeed she had any prejudices against neighbors of differing faiths and ethnicities in Bosnia, they fell away when she landed on American soil.  With survival often comes wisdom.

That Zehra came to smile again and think of mundane things like what to buy at the grocery store and what color to dye her hair taught me something I will never forget – that while there may be some things on this earth worth dying for, there are far more for which to live.

Listen to Your Mother (And Your Grandmother): 20 Practical Life Lessons

My grandmother: training the next generation

You’ve heard the old adage, “Listen to your mother.” Well, when your mother is a teacher accustomed to having other people listen to her and bend to her will, you learn pretty quickly that listening is in your best interest, at least when your car is still on her insurance policy….

The same goes for a grandmother who has been at one and the same time a factory worker, farmer, homemaker, and mother and who can churn out hundreds of lefse in one day (and yes, because it’s a Scandinavian food, you can only make one at a time), get 20 different bowls of food hot and steaming on the dinner table all at the same time, and chop an invasive black snake’s head off in one fell swoop with a kitchen knife without compunction.

I grew up under the example of these stern women, influenced by their relentless stoicism in the face of adversity, their insistence on getting what they want, and their dedication to seeing that the world bend as much as possible to what is right and good…or at least what they believed to be right and good.

Perhaps it was their stoical Scandinavian ancestry and the sense of personal responsibility that comes of being Lutheran that made them the unyielding, witty, and fearsome creatures that they are.

It was my grandmother who taught me how to sew, how to make things grow, and how to laugh at the absurdity of everyday life. She passed on to me old family recipes, showed me how to kill bugs with soap and water, how to stop the itch of a mosquito bite, and instilled in me the usefulness of knowing how to drive a tractor.

And then there was my mother, who, after four decades of reading, studying, and teaching the eternal truths of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens and watching the careful interactions of young people dancing in that netherworld between childhood and freedom, tried to pass onto me her, at one time, nearly flawless understanding of human nature.  Better informed than a psychologist on what made people tick, she gave the soundest advice on how to handle human interactions. It was advice I rarely followed but always learned I should have.

From these two women came practical life lessons that I have often taken for granted as much as washing one’s hands before dinner. But their simple advice, both spoken and demonstrated, has often been my guidebook through the twisting path of life:

1. Ignore negative criticism; accept constructive criticism and compliments graciously.
2. Never send form Christmas letters. The only person who cares that your two-year-old has an IQ of 160, that your daughter just got accepted to Harvard, and that you and your husband spent three months last summer flying around the world in a hot air balloon is you.
3. Do send personal, handwritten thank you notes, especially after weddings and funerals.
4. Have the willpower to walk away when you don’t get your asking price from a salesperson. This is especially true when shopping for cars or buying homes.  You’ll likely get a call in the morning….
5. Buy 12 five-piece place settings, even if your dining room table only seats eight. Despite the china salesman’s demonstration, you can only stand on a teacup so many times before it breaks.
6. Turn off the television. You’ll find you have a lot more time on your hands than you think.
7. Keep a garden. You never know when it might come in handy to know how to produce and preserve your own food.
8. Pick your battles carefully. Nobody listens to the person who always complains and criticizes.
9. Learn how to do your own taxes and home repair or marry somebody who can do them for you.
10. Never say anything you wouldn’t want repeated.
11. Always say “please” and “thank you,” especially to your spouse, your children, your employees, and wait staff.
12. Avoid airing your political and religious views in public.
13. Remember that skepticism is your best defense against salesmen, politicians, lawyers, doctors, and the media.
14. Maintain high standards. Others will emulate your example.
15.  Always remember and recognize the birthdays and special holidays of your friends and family, even if you think it’s just an excuse for Hallmark to make more money.
16. Wear high heels to church, even when you’re 80. How you dress reflects how you feel about what you’re doing.
17. Never stop doing anything you love, even when you’re 90. You are as young as you act, no matter how it feels.
18. Don’t go to sleep when passing through the Grand Tetons. That might be the day a grizzly bear crosses the road.
19. Friends are people who call you when you’re troubled, not just when they are.
20. Remember that happiness comes from living up to your own expectations, not other people’s.

Why Mommy Travels Solo

Being a writer, I travel a lot, often averaging a week away from home a month. I don’t complain about it too much though.  In fact, I’ll let you in on a secret: I love it.  It doesn’t matter that I’m working.  Because let’s face it: while my days “on assignment” can be long and tiring, sometimes starting at 6:30 a.m. and not ending until 10 p.m. (and let’s not forget the couple of hours I then stay up catching up on e-mail at the hotel), they are not usually spent in arduous meetings watching the dullest PowerPoint presentations known to man.  Instead, I will frequently spend these days away from home doing everything from sea kayaking to stand-up paddle boarding.  It could be worse.  It could be a lot worse.

The author, sans famille, enjoying the Sea of Cortez

And even if it were a lot worse, I still wouldn’t complain.  A friend of mine who travels around the world overseeing clinical research trials says she loves hotel rooms.  “When you leave them in the morning and come back in the evening, they look pretty much the way they did when you checked in,” she says. “Someone makes the bed, cleans the bathroom, leaves you cookies.”

An editor, wife, and new mother I ran into on my latest trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee, told me she, too, loves the travel that comes with the job: “I get a king bed all to myself, and I don’t wake up with any cats sleeping on my head.”  An added bonus: she can drink beer at the airport.

Unfortunately, I know far too many women who have not yet discovered the art of traveling solo, whether it’s for work or pleasure.  Guilt ties them to their husbands and children.  They are so guilt-ridden, in fact, that they would never admit to their friends (or even to themselves) that they actually want to get the heck out of Dodge, even if only for a day or two.  This is tragedy on a grand scale.  And I cannot help but wonder why otherwise sane and intelligent women chain themselves to motherhood and marriage as if it’s a life sentence, no probation allowed.

Men rarely do this.  How many men ask their wives if it’s okay to go out with the guys on the weekend or if it would be in bad form to go on a hunting trip to Alaska for a week?  Do men feel this level of bondage?  I don’t think so.  Call it socialization if you will, but even the most liberated women among us still feel they are less than women if they long for a night away from their toddlers or a week away from the company of their spouses.

I’ll admit it took me awhile to discover the blessings of solo travel.  I got my feet wet taking girlfriend getaways and discovered, at first to my horror, that vacationing with women friends was about ten times more fun than traveling with my husband.  You don’t have to waste time looking beautiful every day because your girlfriends really don’t care as long as you’re not embarrassingly sloppy, and you can laugh as loud as you want in the restaurant because women are not as hung up on propriety as men are (yes, it’s true, ladies).  Plus, your female friends won’t give you a guilt trip about going to a museum they’re not really interested in.  Women share and share alike.  Follow me around The Louvre, and I’ll support you in your search for the perfect stinky cheese.  Men will tell you it’s okay with them if all you want to do is shop for shoes in Rome, but they don’t mean it.  And they’ll give you more guilt than your mother when it’s all said and done.

But even better than the girlfriend getaway is the solo retreat.  And I don’t care if it’s an actual vacation or travel for work.  Few things beat sitting alone in a posh restaurant in a tropical garden in L.A. sipping California Riesling without having to carry a conversation or make someone else laugh.  It’s divine, in fact, about as divine as sinking into a king-size bed in a hotel suite you have all to yourself with no 6 a.m. “I’ts morning time, Mommy!” wake-up calls.

When I travel by myself, whether it’s on my own personal vacation or on assignment for a magazine, I retreat (without even being aware of it sometimes) into a life that is mine but isn’t.  All the anxiety of meeting deadlines, picking up the kid on time, being cheerful for a grumpy spouse coming home after 12 hours of work and a long commute, and suppressing my own “I just want to scream because I can’t take it anymore” tendencies so I don’t land my daughter in psychotherapy before age 12 dissipate into thin air.  I forget that crazy woman who lives at home and become entirely myself–the long lost adventurer of my youth out on a journey to see the world and live in the moment with no responsibility to my name but getting out of bed and living hard and blissfully all day long.

If you tell me you don’t need this, then I have to tell you: you are lying to yourself, whether out of guilt or societal pressure, I don’t know.  But you are lying.  Because we all need to be apart from our families.  We all need to stay in touch with the women that we were and still are beneath that stressed out surface of the world’s greatest multi-tasker.

I didn’t realize how much I needed it until returning from a trip one day and pausing across a long layover at O’Hare to have lunch and remembering for a moment that I was returning to my four-year-old’s birthday party–a potential mob of waist-high people in my house, the presence of my mother, my mother-in-law, and sundry relatives who all think I’m just a little bit too much to take.  The thought of that re-entry into my everyday life made me scan the menu for hard liquor.

But, in the end, while I’ll never be the mother my mother thinks I should be, I’m a damn good one just the same.  And that’s because my solo journeys strengthen my sanity and enable me to walk into my bedroom, where my daughter has just colored the ottoman on my favorite chair with an ink pen, and not turn into psycho-mommy.  Instead, I glance over at the stack of Italy travel books on my nightstand, smile a little to myself about my next escape, and engage in a strangely rational conversation with my child about why we don’t do pen and ink drawings on household furniture.

So next time you find yourself putting on a “mommy show” for your 10-year-old, who seems mildly amused that you can get so upset over the fact that he just locked his sister in the closet (a treatment she may well have deserved if she was chattering on the way she is known to chatter on), consider the fact that it may be time for you to do some solo traveling of your own.