The Art of the Working Mom: Jazz Hands

I love basketball season. I myself was not an athletic child unless you count show choir. Jazz hands. Hand-eye coordination is just not my thing. I only started working out in my late 20s mostly as a result of rapid weight gain after marriage. Turns out I cannot eat as much as my husband and maintain my weight or my health for that matter. That’s why I began running, even ran one marathon in my day, but that is a story for a different day.

Two of my three children play basketball and I love to watch them play. I don’t know all the rules. And furthermore, I don’t always know what to shout from the stands. But I do know that being present matters. So I go to games and cheer, sometimes loudly because I am an excitable person by nature. But during basketball season the already hurried week turns into chaos. Practices, away games, and work become a balancing act. And I feel like I always disappoint someone.

This week there have been two away games and when I say away, I mean far far away. And the mom guilt when I need to choose work over a game is intense. But I can’t be everything to everyone, or at least my inner dialogue screams this to me as I frantically try to reschedule everything to be everywhere.

The choices of the week feel insurmountable at times when the choice is work or family. Do I choose to be a good employee or be a good mom? That’s fun right. No pressure there. Life seemed easier with cummerbunds and Jazz hands, let me just tell you.

But not being at every game also teaches something. It teaches healthy disappointment and how to prioritize. It teaches that our household income and my own vocational purpose matter too. So when mom guilt rises, I change my inner dialogue to “everything I do as a working mom matters” and sometimes that is choosing one event over another.

The thing about priorities is that they are not the same every time. Some days work wins and other days I leave early to drive to Hickory to watch a basketball game. This is the art of the working mom. It takes coordination, careful consideration of the level of importance of each game/activity, and most importantly luck. Some days I still make the wrong call in spite of all my attempts to think it through.

By showing up when I can, I show my children that they are important even though they can not be the center of my universe every moment. Children are self involved by nature; this is developmentally normal according to social scientist (which happens to be my favorite kind of scientist). Instead of just saying I can’t come to event, I teach why it is important I don’t. The goal here is to model healthy work life choices, as two of my children will be working moms themselves someday.