STEP ONE

Learning To Value Our Mothering Accomplishments

When I was in high school and college, I thought that it was fine for a woman to pursue motherhood as a side dish to her career, but certainly not as the main course of life. I believed that women who did so were oppressed, unfulfilled, or, at best, woefully unliberated.

When motherhood and home became the spaghetti and meatballs of my life a few years later, I had to learn from scratch how to value the way I was spending my days. In the coming essays and excerpts, you will read how I, as well as other mothers, have learned to ignore the Betty Friedan-quoting women's studies professors who refuse to evacuate our brains and have chosen, alternatively, to turn up the volume on what the Torah has to say about the importance of mothering – for the future of our children and that of the Jewish people, and for our own personal and spiritual growth as well.

BLAH-BUSTER TIDBIT

Restocking Our Spiritual Tool Box

by Pessy Leah Lester

Being a wife and mother is hard work, harder than any job I've ever had. As a young mother, I felt the truth of that old saying, "Man's work is from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done." I was running so fast just to stay in one place. I thought the day would never end.

Over time I gained valuable home management skills from friends, relatives, role models, and counselors. I also gleaned valuable advice from books and magazines. These helpful hints included such things as menu planning, play groups with neighbors, shopping lists, writing it all down, the portable phone, getting as much cleaning and babysitting help as you can, and making time for yourself.

But even after getting organized physically, I still wasn't able to get through the day happily. These management tools may help organize your day, but if you don't have a good attitude towards [managing a home and raising a family], then all the tools, techniques, menus, and lists won't help organize you body and soul.

I used to resent the amount of work I had to do at home. I thought that being a mother meant I would be eternally doomed to loads of dirty laundry, tied to the stove with a ball and chain, and forever changing diapers. But that's not necessarily the case. I realized I could be the kind of wife and mother I choose to be. I could be a happy mother or a miserable mother; it is merely a matter of attitude. An older and experienced mother in my community with a dozen or so children once told me, "You can get through the day laughing or crying. It's easier (and nicer) to laugh."

... Well beyond physical help and management skills, most women today in their early childbearing years also need a mental and spiritual toolbox. I used to pride myself on how well I could fix things around the house and looked fondly upon the box of tools my father assembled for me before I went to college. But I came to realize that my mental tool kit was bare, so I started to assemble some suggestions and reminders to keep me going, one baby step at a time....

Mindful Motherhood

Four Tools for the Prevention of Emotional Orphans

When I was a student at Bowdoin College in Maine just over a decade ago, I had a few friends who were education majors. I would tell them that I would never want to be a teacher, since I was certain that whatever I would be doing in the world, it would be something big – involving nationwide policies, working in Congress, or (this was my real dream) influencing and ultimately saving the whole entire world. In my sophomore year of college, Thomas Pickering, a Bowdoin graduate who was at the time the US Ambassador to the United Nations, came to speak with the undergraduates. I don't remember a thing he said. I only remember how inspired I was by his presence and how he represented the fulfillment of my highest possible aspiration – that one day, many years later, I would stand at the podium in that same auditorium and be the kind of person that college students would also dream to become.

To this end, I majored in Russian and in political science and became fixated on the Soviet Union. I traveled many times to Russia, memorized the intricate hierarchy of the Soviet government, and spent hundreds of hours watching the Soviet news via satellite with a notebook balanced in my lap to mark down new vocabulary words. I thought that after graduation I would work for the Foreign Service or the State Department, or something like that, and climb my way up. Well, needless to say, my life has followed a very different path from the one I had envisioned for myself.

My life as a mother is not only not big; it is absolutely microscopic. My life centers not around shaping countries, regions, or even cities, but rather around my teensy-weensy daughters and watching them grow, ever so slowly, into infinitesimally more grown-up human beings, And this process is often as slow and as thankless for long stretches of time as sitting and waiting on Friday afternoon for a ten-liter pot of chicken soup to boil.

This week, Rebbetzin Yemima Mizrachi reminded us in her class on the weekly Torah portion that the Torah says that Abraham died when he was "zaken ba bayamim" (Genesis 24:1), which literally means "old and coming with days." The Sefat Emet explains that the phrase "coming with days" refers to the fact that when we die, each one of our days will come along with us to Heaven in order to testify as to whether we got the fullest potential out of every day or whether we just let the Heaven-sent opportunities in our lives slip through our fingers. The Sefat Emet explains that Abraham's days came with him when he died and testified that he had succeeded in finding the point of light hidden in each and every day, the mini-mission from God for that particular day – to give charity that Thursday, to preach monotheism to a nomadic tribe the following Sunday, and so on.

In some ways, "coming with days," getting the most out of every moment, has become much easier since I've become a mother. With my writing in the mornings, for example, I know that I have exactly two and a half, maybe three hours of writing until my baby wakes up, so I am efficient. I don't make phone calls in the middle, I don't even run downstairs for an apple despite my rumbling belly. I write as though I am half-way through a final exam and there is only half an hour left to go. This is in comparison with the dreamy distraction with which I used to write my college papers: taking a break to go to the Student Union to buy a package of Doritos, or to skim an unrelated article in a journal from which I was quoting.

The same is true when I attend my weekly class on the books of Ezra and Nehemia. Early every Thursday morning, I take my baby to a...