Mother's Day

Welcome to my diatribe. Hope you already read the great news about Sylvie's tumor shrinkage, surgery, et cetera.

So, being a mom is hard. It doesn't matter how you qualify it-- working, part-time, full-time, stay-at-home, married, single-- I'm sure I left out a few. I used to tell myself that if Anna Nicole Smith can be a mom, so can I. For some reason, Michael got a free subscription to Working Mother magazine that arrived right around the same day, April 14th to be precise, I was listening to an NPR program while driving home from the hospital late one night. It was called "College Tells Women Healthy Balance is Key" and focused on a business class at George Washington University that aims to teach young women how to balance their careers with their personal lives. It featured Professor Kathy Korman Frey, Leslie Morgan Steiner who is the editor of the best-selling Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families Washington Post journalist and lastly, a business major at GWU. It was interesting albeit not groundbreaking yet timely in this economy. I think there have been nearly a dozen NPR stories on working moms, dual-working households, stay-at-home moms rejoining the workforce since mid-April and just in time for Mother's Day. Anyway, you can hear it at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103073298 or in honor of Mother's Day, I'm sure there will be another dozen articles or McNews programs tomorrow.

That being said, I was quite feeling sorry for myself when I was listening to it based on my current situation. This week marked my 12th week on my [FMLA] leave of absence from Razor & Tie. Let me start by saying that every single person at my company has been incredibly supportive of me and my family. I consider myself fortunate in that regard, at least. If I could nominate them for an award about work life balance, I would.
There are countless numbers of women who are involuntarily thrown into situations rendering them on unplanned sudden leave-of-absences, neither here nor there, careers on hold, lives on hold to which life-work-balance has an altogether different meaning. Consider for a moment the moms regardless of where they spend the hours of 9-to-5 who have an ill or special needs child? Life-work balance is hard under any circumstances. Throw in a sick kid and then you really tip the scale.

I was talking to Jette's mom, Shannon, the othe night as we rode in the elevator to the P1 parking lot level while the dads slept overnight at HUMC. She is back at work so her husband and brother-in-law are often with Jette in clinic and on 5E. I told her that I attended two 'work functions' (yes, even seeing a band play at a club on Ludlow Street counts as a work function when your whole company is in attendance) and she asked me what it was like for me. I told her I felt like an imposter or like a patient who had escaped from a psych ward since I had to return to the hospital to sleep over after the show. Then we talked our inability to hear people talk about 'trivial' things. I mean, I want to talk about shopping and fun things but because those things are so beyond my Top 10 Reality List, it's difficult for me to pay attention right now. I said to Shannon, "Yeah, I'm shopping too, shopping for a surgeon to cut out two thirds of my daughter's liver, do you have a promo code or coupon because I think it's gonna be around a hundred grand." On a good day, I could talk about food, cooking, wellness, celebrity gossip, Twilight, True Blood and Gossip Girl all day long. I've gotten back to reading the The New York Times Travel Section and love hearing about our friends' trips although I can't possibly imagine the next time the Hughes family will go on a vacation... or a vacation more than 90 minutes from HUMC which is long enough for the Emla cream to work if we need it.

I wanted to talk about Mother's Day. With all due respect, I can't stand it, but don’t let that stop you from celebrating. I love my mom infinitely and have the utmost love and adoration for both of my grandmas but really, I'm not into Hallmark holidays. Sylvie was 2 days old when we were in the vintage NYU Medical Center celebrating our first Mother's Day together which was also my actual due. Even my doctor, Steven Ordorica, came to visit us on Mother’s Day instead of seeing his own mom, Rose. I was touched. For my second Mother's Day, Michael gave me a very amazing and un-Mother's Day present which was a day alone rock climbing in the Shawagunks with my friend and guide, Paul. My own mom questioned that I wanted to spend Mother's Day alone and that my husband would encourage it. I had a great day. I was still nursing Sylvie and by the last pitch of the day, I was a little top-heavy and in pain, to say the least! For my third Mother's Day, I really want to pay homage to the unsung heroes who are the moms who I see every day at HUMC and who have helped our family over the past three months. I’ll be bringing cupcakes and snacks to them tomorrow morning after Om Nama Shivaya-ing at Shree Yoga.

The moms I have met over the last 12 week are gentle warriors, including myself. We come from all different backgrounds and are all different shapes and colors. Married with one child (like us), married with multiple kids, single parents with at least one kid, working moms on FMLA leaves of absence or now taking time off from any number of different careers to be fulltime caregivers, stay at home moms, moms living on the bench of their child's hospital room or TCF provided off-site housing, families from far away (like Tortola!). And let's not forget the doctors, nurses, volunteers, social workers, countless other hospital employees who make our days brighter as well as the at home nurses and pharmacists who are moms and grandmas. Together they make our lives a little more bearable. When one nurse rubs Sylvie's back for 10 minutes until she falls asleep just like her own child, or another nurse tells me about her own experience with her son being in the hospital, an APN tells me stories about her son who a crappy-eater and Sylvie's age, another one trades breast-feeding stories with me and an oncologist tells me about her willful son. We unite under one roof and one word that is CANCER because we are mothers.

In addition, we’re lucky to have the moms of my working mom’s play group and my non-working mom comrades, too, heck even my single and newly smug-marrieds in the city and Brooklyn ready to catch us whenever we might falter, lose our minds or starve. From organizing meals and blood drives throughout our whole neighborhood, creating Strides for Sylvie, visiting us in the hospital during their limited free time when their own young children or newborns were at home, praying with their families and congregations, walking Lucky and feeding OJ and chatting online with me in the wee hours of the night. I would also say that my brother & Caryn and their whole family are an Army unto themselves! So when I sigh with relief that Sylvie continues to respond great to chemotherapy and throw my fists in the air and scream, “FUCK CANCER,” I know that we are joined by our own militia comprised of those we hold near and dear to our hearts.

Happy Mother’s Day.