Beam Me Up

I’m not a Trekkie or a science fiction buff for that matter. But I think I had a brush with teleportation (or something like it), last week. Remember the transporter that instantaneously beamed Captain Kirk and the crew from one place to another? That’s what happened to me, as I ventured on one of my first overnight business trips since becoming a mother.

Everything is still a bit hazy, but here’s what I recall: One moment, I was rushing to LAX, feeling heartsick as I waved “bye-bye” to my son at 5:30 a.m., worrying how he and my daughter would fare when they realized I wouldn’t be tucking them in that night (and praying they would sleep through the night for my husband). Before I had a chance to get my head around one, my anxiety and two, my guilt, I found myself pounding the pavement in mid-town Manhattan, game face on, totally unencumbered from the little hands that typically tug at my knees. It was as if for split second, I had stepped back in time. Dare I say, I looked polished, professional and felt like the old me was back.

Then suddenly, Poof! After a whirlwind seventy-two hours, I was back in our kitchen at dawn, coaxing the kids into their high chairs for breakfast. It felt like I had never left. And at the same time, I felt like I had been gone for weeks.

I am not the only working mother grappling with the dilemma of rushing back and forth between two lives. With 70 percent of us back in the saddle in some capacity, be it full-time, part-time, flex-time, work-at-home, freelance or some other hybrid, moms face the daunting challenge of needing (and often wanting) to be in two places at once. As we wrestle with the demands of our personal and professional lives, we are asked to transform ourselves in a flash.

What I struggled with last week was coming back to earth—on both sides of my journey. My head was spinning as I prepared to walk back into my old haunts two years after taking a break from my career to be home with my children. On the other side, back in Los Angeles, it took more than the five hour flight from JFK to shake off the high energy, high stress mode of my trip and just be “Mommy.” We were off to story time, our toddler class, and the park, and I was so happy to be home. But I was exhausted and feeling a bit off-balance.