CHAPTER 1

JANUARY 1

"10–9–8–7–6–5–4–3–2–1 ... Happy New Year!"

In Korea, the New Year is celebrated with a ritual of reverence for old people:The children make a ceremonial bow before their elders, kneeling all the waydown until their foreheads touch the ground. Parents do the same before thegrandparents; everybody bows to anyone who is older. And when the elder acceptsthe gesture of respect, the child is rewarded with a coin ... even if the childis all grown up.

I'm going to go on a diet, Americans say to ourselves on this day,and get back to my pre-pregnancy weight once and for all. Some of ushave been saying that for twenty-five years now. But as we pull off the lastpage of last year's calendar, we say it again. I'm going to do something sothat I'll be like I was when I was young. Thin. Full of pep. Maybe this yearI'll do something about these bags under my eyes.

But do you really want to be what you were in those days? So you're fatternow—you're also smarter. More sure of yourself. You can't be those thingswhen you're young and inexperienced; it takes time to learn from your mistakes.Wisdom takes time to accumulate. That's why the Koreans honor the old: wisdomlives in them. And it lives in us, too, more and more as the years pass. Stickaround long enough and the errors of your youth can become the stuff of whichgood advice is made. You can be proud of the things you learned the hard way.They may have left a few scars, but they have made you wise.

JANUARY 2

"O brave new world, that has such people in 't!"

—THE TEMPEST, ACT V SCENE I

When we looked forward to the end of the twentieth century from the middle ofit, we thought we'd have more things figured out than we do. If you grew upexpecting to be a wife and mother in a fairly predictable way, you've alreadybeen surprised by how unpredictable that life turned out to be. If you grew upexpecting the women's movement to have pretty much settled things by now, you'vealready been surprised at how unsettled things still are.

So many things are possible for us now. We have choices we didn't have before.Great: now we have to be terrific in two worlds instead of one. We look atbeautiful pictures of food in magazines and wish we had time to make dishes lookand taste as lovely as that. Or we look at a list in another magazine of the tenhottest careers for women and notice that ours is not among them, and we feeljust the tiniest bit judged.

Hotter than what? And according to whom? The career that's hotfor you is the one that warms your heart. Maybe you do the work you do becauseyou really love it. Or maybe you don't, and you do it because the people youlove have to eat. Is one less strong and brave than the other? I don't think so.Who cares whether or not it's on somebody's hot list? Or beautiful enough to bein a magazine? Choices are supposed to make people more free, not lessso.

So don't let the magazine pictures make you feel inadequate. Or the hot joblists, either. You can't do everything, and only a few things relating to anykind of work are glamorous. It's your commitment to what you do that makes itgood for you.

JANUARY 3

"On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, eleven piperspiping...."—THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

By the way, Christmas is not over. You've got until the Feast of the Epiphany(January 6th) to do all the things you didn't get to before December 25th.That's what the Church calendar says, and I'm going by that. This has thefollowing advantages:

1. You can send out your Christmas cards now, when they will be much morenoticeable. You can also respond in an informed way to the news people sent youin their cards which arrived on time. That way you won't be sending Mr. and Mrs.cards to people who divorced during the year.

2. You can buy things on sale in a store that doesn't look and sound like theCommodities Exchange, and ... a salesperson will be around when you need one.

3. You don't have to take your tree down right away.

4. You can keep playing Christmas music on the stereo.

5. You can call people to wish them a Merry Christmas when they'll actually havetime to talk to you.

6. You can space out some of the gifts you give to your children. They don't allhave to come on the same day. It can be more like Chanukah. The benefits of thisare enormous. No sensory overload. No present frenzy in which a gift is barelyacknowledged before the next one is torn into. And your kids actually learn towait.

With a little encouragement, people are at their best at this time of year.Let's not revert to our crabby selves too quickly. We've got all year.

JANUARY 4

"Where can I flee from your presence?" —PSALM 139:6

I got up this morning at five o'clock. I thought I would have some timeto myself—two hours, maybe, in a silent house.

Looking forward to this delicious slice of privacy at the day's beginning, Iwent to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. And as I waited for the kettle toboil, I heard a noise outside the door. Oh, no. It was Rosie, eldest grandchild.Up early, just like me.

"It's too early for you to be up," I said severely. And then I looked at her andthought of what it was like when I was four years old and awakened to hear mygrandmother in the kitchen. What was I making, Rosie wanted to know. Tea, Ianswered, and got her some juice.

I did regret my lost two hours, and yet I also think that four-year-olds havethe right to expect their grandmothers to be glad to see them. I rememberfeeling exactly the same ambivalence when her mother got up at the crack of manya long-ago dawn and destroyed my quiet time. I needed it. But she also neededme. And I needed her. I didn't know then how short the time with her would seemwhen it was over. Hardly any time at all. And now? You talk about quiet.

Rosie's feet were bare. Aren't your feet cold? No, she said. I got hersome socks anyway. She drank her juice and chattered happily on and on about herschool and the cookies she and her mother made to take there for the Christmasparty. She had no sense of having interrupted anything important. And she wasright. She's a pretty important person. There'll be other mornings for me alone.

JANUARY 5

"Oh, how good and pleasant it is!" —PSALM 133:1

Radio playing nice music. House sort of clean. Laundry done. Candles on thetable, ready to light. Table set. Food all ready to cook quickly. Recipe we bothlike. Even a nice dessert made.

I had the day off today, so I had time to make things really nice. I got all thehouse things done and still had five or six wonderful hours. I was alone allday. I could listen to the music I like without irritating anyone. Eventhe phone calls were all people I wanted to talk to. And there weren't all thatmany of them.

I am very aware of how nice this is: just to take care of the house and make agood dinner. So different from a normal, hectic day, with its appointments andinterruptions, places to be on time, things to pick up on the way home, thingsto decide. We have to have take-out meals sometimes, or meals eaten at differenttimes from everyone else because I get home so much later than my family. Thereare weeks in which I don't feel I see them very much, these people I love themost. A hurried good-bye in the morning and an evening in which we're too sleepyto interact much.

I leaf through a magazine. A psychologist writes that I should be having onemeal a day which the whole family eats together. I don't always do that. But wedo the best we can. We enjoy one another when we are together. And atleast the phone calls are regular and frequent and satisfying. Full of love.

Don't worry if you can't do the best thing every time—you'll rob yourselfof the enjoyment of the things you can do.

JANUARY 6

"What do you mean by coming in here at eighteen minutes past the hour?"—SCROOGE, TO BOB CRATCHITT, A CHRISTMAS CAROL

You're late.

You're stuck in traffic and the minutes tick by. Only fifteen minutes beforeyou're supposed to be there. Ten. Now you're supposed to be there. Now it'safter the time you were supposed to be there. You are furious. What'sthe matter up there? Why isn't anybody moving? You feel your heart pounding.

They're wondering where you are. You wish you had a cell phone. Now theyprobably think you're a lightweight. Undependable. Where is she? Are yousure she knew when the meeting started? Somebody's probably calling your home.

Hold it. There are times when there is simply nothing you can do, and this isone of them. The traffic will unsnarl when it does, and heart palpitations won'tspeed things up. This is one of those things you cannot change. Move beyond it:it's lousy and it'll be over, but for now it's time to do some damage control.You'll have to apologize to those you've inconvenienced and explain whathappened. If you're always late, you'll want to take a look at that.Leave earlier or something. But that's the future. For now, you're just stuck.And so ...

You now have some free time. Nobody can reach you and you can't doanything about it. But you can switch on the radio and calm yourselfdown. Think about what to make for dinner. Think about something nice. You'llget there. And you'll be better able to deal with the consequences of being lateif you get a grip on yourself now.

JANUARY 7

"And the muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron hands ..."—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Today all the health clubs are running newspaper ads to cash in on people's NewYear's resolutions. You and a guilty friend can sign up for the price of oneperson. Then you can get the kind of body you want, which is described in theads as "hard."

This idea of women being hard is new. When I was young, we were supposed to besoft. I got to be very good at that, and have been extremely soft all my life. Iam not sure hard is something I'm going to be able to manage at this late date.The doctor I'm seeing now has given me a group of exercises to do, like "as manysitups as I can," which should eventually make my stomach hard. That will be anew experience. I also lie on the floor and tighten my buttocks and stay thatway for ten seconds, so I guess my bottom will one day be hard as well. All ofthese hard muscles I'm developing are going to hold my spine in the rightposition, I hear, and then my back won't hurt. "How long should I keep doingthem," I ask. "For the rest of your life," he says.

In the train station today I saw a whole shelf of magazines about getting hard.Improbably-muscled men and women held each other like footballs, their bloodvessels standing out like cords on their arms and chests because they have nofat at all. I can't say they're attractive exactly, but they certainly are hard.They work out for hours each day to get that way, and once they've gotten hardthey can never stop. It'll all turn to fat if they do. Just imagine the poorthings if that happened: enormous, doughy mountains of soft flesh staring sadlyat faded muscle magazine covers to remind them of their glory days, back whenthey were hard.

You won't be seeing me on one of those magazine covers in a leotard, with myblood vessels standing out like cords. I'll be satisfied if I can make my backstop hurting. As I already feel better when I do these exercises than I do whenI don't, they must work. I'll never be hard. But maybe I can be strong.

JANUARY 8

"Life is unfair." —JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY

Unemployed for over a year, my friend finally landed a short-term job. I'lltake it, she says; in this market you can't be choosy. Besides, its niceto have my professional expertise recognized for a change. This job searchbusiness is a little hard on the ego.

Wouldn't you know: the Saturday before the first training weekend, she lands inthe hospital with diverticulitis, a painful inflammation of the intestinal wall.She's had it before, but this time it's really bad. Her roommate tells methey're probably going to have to operate and she doesn't quite know how tobreak it to Brooke. Oh, no, I say: what about the job? Of all times forsomething like this to happen.

I am not going to miss this training weekend, Brooke tells the doctor.Sure enough, she goes home. A nurse comes to show her how to give herselfintravenous antibiotics. This is better anyway, she says; we'll destroy theinfection with this stuff, then I can have the operation after it's cleared up.It's simpler this way. But there's hardly anything she can eat. I don't care,she says, I needed to lose weight. In fact, I would go to this training dead ifI had to. And at the end of the week, with an IV lock in her arm but verymuch alive, she gets on the train for the first weekend workshop.

She's a determined woman. She's kept herself in good spirits, going out oninterview after interview, but it's been brutal. She knows she's part of therecession, that this is about the economy, not about her. But so what? Sure,it helps to know you're not alone, she quips, just not all that much. Whatreally helps unemployed people is getting work.

JANUARY 9

"Give us, outside sleep, serenity." —GIORGOS SEFERIADES

I don't know why I can't sleep, but I'm very grateful. I know I'm goingto regret it tomorrow, when I have to plod through a long day without adequaterest, but I need this time to work. It is unusual for me to be able to work atnight; usually I'm too tired. The difference today is that I'm keyed up about adeadline I have to make and the host of distractions which will crowd between meand it this week. How will I get everything done? I don't know the answer tothat yet. I just will. I have to. I will make my insomnia part of thewar effort. Why lie awake in bed fretting when I can be awake working?

I said yes to some social engagements I ought to have refused these last twoweeks. I need the time to work. When it came time to go off on one of thesejunkets, I have felt both guilty and angry in all kinds of ways. Guilty aboutnot working. Guilty if I canceled or postponed a date. Angry at whoever asked meto have a few hours of innocent fun, as if such an invitation were a deliberateact of sabotage. Angry that I can't have a social life when I have a deadline.Angry at myself, really, because I didn't space out my work better: I could haveavoided this bottleneck by working more steadily. I rebuke myself sharply.Why don't you ever plan ahead?

But I am always like this with a project. I must be one of those people whoneeds pressure in order to perform. I wish I were otherwise, but we are the waywe are. I would not want to live this way all the time, but I must say I'mimpressed with the old girl. I can still respond to a shot of adrenaline when Ihave to.

JANUARY 10

"Praise the sea; on shore remain." —JOHN FLORIO

I'm home, Corinna says when she calls at about one in the afternoon.Madeline got sick at school again. Her male boss, who has never had tomiss work because of a sick child, is not above heaving an exasperated sigh, asif she had done this deliberately. He's not a bad guy ordinarily. I guesspeople just forget sometimes what it can be like. People who've never beensingle parents forget especially well, I find.

If she's not better tomorrow I'll see if I can move some things around in myschedule and watch Madeline. My mother would have done the same for me. Butoften I can't manage that, so Corinna's left to struggle through anotherchildcare nightmare on her own. Corinna and a lot of other people. I wish itwere easier.

I remember lying to an employer when one of my children got sick, telling him itwas I who was ill. I knew he would question my commitment to the job if Ididn't, and I was right. That was degrading; I felt guilty for doing it, as iftaking care of my kids was wrong. But that's the message: be serious about yourwork or be a mother. You can't be both.

Except that more than half of all American mothers are both. There issome evidence that things are improving: Corinna doesn't lie about her kidsbeing sick, and she doesn't feel as guilty as I did. Her boss may sigh noisily,but he doesn't do much else. And there are men at work who sometimes findthemselves in the same boat. But it's so hard. I hope your kids are well and inschool today. If they're not, I hope they can go back tomorrow, and that nobodysays anything thoughtless and cruel to you about it if they can't. Or, ifsomeone does, that you've got a withering response all picked out, and the gutsto use it.