I've Still Got It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty by Jenna McCarthy

Author:Jenna McCarthy [McCarthy, Jenna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

My Boss Is a Bitch: A Self-Employment Story

Women my age are in a unique position. Unlike our moms just a generation before us—who mostly didn’t pursue careers and if they did, their choices were basically teacher or nurse—we were told that we could be anything we wanted to be when we grew up. (Except strippers or circus performers, which was confusing since our dads were such huge fans of both.) Nothing could stop us! Fulfilling careers, doting husbands, darling children, showcase homes, gourmet meals, exotic vacations: We could have it all. All we had to do was go to school, get good grades, and work really hard, and the gods of success and fortune and happiness would follow us around everywhere we went, pissing all over our heads.

Forty-some-odd years later, I’m going to have to call bullshit.

I realize this probably isn’t a newsflash to you—the sad reality that we can’t in fact have it all, at least not simultaneously—especially if you’re a working mom. Having it all would mean our very young children would be welcome at work with us, all day every day, where we’d be encouraged to take frequent block-building and baby-yoga breaks. Oh, and naps. Lots of naps. Never, ever would a tiny person we pushed out of our vaginas (or had removed surgically through a man-made gash in our abdomens or flew to China to adopt) cling crying to our legs, begging us between snotty, heaving sighs, Please don’t go to work, please, Mommy, please, and ripping a hole in our hearts and our last pair of decent stockings in the process. When our spawn got older, we wouldn’t even have to ask permission to slip out of the office to attend one of their class plays or shuttle them to various doctor’s appointments; the world would know and respect the fact that our first job, always and forever, was being someone’s mother, and everyone would bow at our feet whenever we donned our Mom hats. When our beneficiaries got older still, our bosses would hand out hefty bonuses to help us cover our newly outrageous auto-insurance tabs and the cost of adding another cell phone to our family plans. Our husbands would do the bulk of the grocery shopping and housekeeping duties, of course, even though they would have fabulously satisfying jobs, too, because the universal understanding would be that our work was more important. We’d be paid the handsome salaries that we deserve—in addition to a generous clothing allowance—and we’d never, ever have to choose between getting a pedicure and getting a promotion.

What’s that saying again? Oh yeah. If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.

I love being a mom. As often as not, it’s also truly, spectacularly, overwhelmingly hard. My paying job is a petal-strewn cakewalk compared to the duties of motherhood. I’m not saying that I choose to work so I can get away from my kids (although believe me, there have been days I’ve

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