Page 1 of Woman on the Verge

Part 1

Chapter 1

Nicole

“Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?”

I read somewhere that mothers are summoned by their small children once every three minutes. I have two small children, and they are rarely in sync, so I am summoned far more often. At least once every sixty seconds, I’d guess.

The one summoning me was Grace, my three-year-old. Her sister, Olivia (we call her Liv), is two. They are adorable, real-life versions of Cindy Lou Who fromHow the Grinch Stole Christmas, which is a reference I can pull quickly because they watch that movie year round. On a daily basis, I kiss as many inches of their tiny bodies as I can. I would die for them. I would. And I just might because I think they are trying to kill me.

“Mommy?”

I did not respond right away. An article I read online suggested that I’ve trained Grace to whine like this because I’ve been too reactive and responsive to her. It’s my fault, essentially. It’s always the mother’s fault.

“Mommy?”

Before having the girls, I craved this title—Mommy. It took nearly two years for me to get pregnant with Grace. (I assumed it would take as long the second time, but lo and behold, it happened right away.This is why the girls are only sixteen months apart.) Now that I have the title, I realize that I’d completely romanticized motherhood. I had no idea what it entailed, not the day-to-day nitty-gritty of it. How can anyone really know?

“Mommy?”

I started to break out in a sweat so intense I wanted to peel off my skin. Google says I may be going through perimenopause, a full-blown life transition, à la puberty, that should probably not coincide with raising toddlers.

“Mommy?”

I gave in: “What is it, sweetie?”

“Can we go to the park today?” Grace asked.

“Park!” Liv shrieked. She is her sister’s parrot, ensuring that I always hear everything at least twice.

“Sure.”

It was a Tuesday morning, and I was a mother taking her children to the park.

I never thought this would be my life.

I used to work as a graphic designer at an ad agency—creating logos and brochures touting the benefits of a poison that people (women, mostly) inject into their faces to get rid of age-revealing wrinkles. It wasn’t the most meaningful work, but I rationalized that at least I was doing something loosely connected to my college degree. I went to the Rhode Island School of Design for photography, but I took enough graphic design classes to be dangerous. People at RISD thought I was talented, “going places.” I don’t think suburban Orange County is what they had in mind.

At the agency, I was in charge of photo shoots—positioning models at various angles to capture the beauty of their frozen faces. My artsy friends at RISD would call me a sellout if they knew, so it’s probably good that I lost touch with all of them by the time I entered my thirties.

I was determined to stay full time at work even when I had kids, and I did, for a while. After my maternity leave with Grace, I went backto work, which meant she was in day care nine hours a day. I knew I was supposed to feel an immense amount of guilt about this, but I loved going back to work. I missed her—the soft warmth of her skin against mine, her goofy toothless smile, her gleeful babbles, the sound of her little hands slapping at the hardwood floor as she learned to scoot and crawl. But I missed myself too. Working felt like returning to that self. I savored the luxury of eating sandwiches with two hands while in a seated position, something that had not happened since I’d become a mother. I could hear my own thoughts, and remembered that I liked them. And I liked having an identity beyond my child. I liked feeling competent. A more evolved person may not need a job to give them a sense of self-worth, but I believe it will become clear that I am not an evolved person.

I got pregnant with Liv while still breastfeeding Grace (I was one of those idiots who didn’t think this was possible). I attempted to repeat the same series of events—take maternity leave, enroll baby in day care, return to work. But it quickly became apparent that working fifty hours per week with two babies—“two under two!”—was not going to be sustainable. The cesspool that is day care meant that one or both girls were sick nearly every week. I’d get a call from the day care to come retrieve the feverish child, which led to abandoning my to-do list for the remainder of the day (and sometimes the next day) to play nurse. Kyle and I never formally discussed that this responsibility would be mine. It seemed like the natural choice because his paycheck was larger than mine, and, well, wasn’t caretaking a fundamental maternal duty? The day care thought so—they’d called me, after all, even though they had Kyle’s number too. Kyle thought so, judging by the fact that he never offered to play nurse. And if I’m honest, I thought so too. As progressive as I think I am, I have absorbed all the messages about what a mother should be. I have taken them as gospel.

On the illness front, Liv was especially problematic because every cold became an ear infection that caused her to scream-cry in agony through the nights. This meant I wasn’t sleeping because, per gospel,the mother is the one who gets up with the children. In a state of severe deprivation on many levels, I had a middle-of-the-night panic attack, the first of my life, accompanied by a sudden understanding of what mothers meant when they said they had no choice but to leave the workforce entirely or dramatically reduce their hours.

“I think I should go freelance,” I told Kyle.

We were both up past midnight, sitting next to each other in bed with our trusty laptops, attempting to finish work that had spilled over from the day. It was almost unfathomable that there had been a time when we were college sweethearts who couldn’t keep our hands off each other, who felt a physical ache when separated for a handful of hours. Were those even the same people?

I presented my case, telling him that about a third of the people at the agency were freelancers. Sure, they sacrificed the benefits of company-paid health care and retirement plans, but they could work flex schedules on their terms.

“Okay,” he said, still typing away. When he finally looked up, he added, “We’re lucky. We have options.”

But that was just it—I didn’t feel like I had an option at all. Ihadto quit my full-time job. Ihadto “dial back.” Kyle wasn’t going to do it. He was still “going places” with his career.

“I just can’t do it anymore,” I said.

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