Can Any Mom Have it All? Guest Post by Sheryl Parbhoo

Today’s post was written by a friend of mine, fellow blogger Sheryl Parbhoo, who you can find at Southern Life, Indian Wife. According to Sheryl, she is “born and bred in the South, I am as American as they come. My shoulders burn after 30 seconds in the sun, I love fast food, and the only language my ancestors ever spoke was Southern. I am also the wife of an Indian man, who is paradoxically as Indian and as American as they come. His arms turn black after 30 seconds in the sun, he loves fast food and his mom’s food, and speaks or understands five languages, including “Redneck.””

I asked Sheryl to come and bring her voice over to Masala Chica to share it with our readers over here. I hope you enjoy her authenticity as much as I do. Today she asks if any mom can have it all, inspired by Pepsi CEO Indrani Nooyi’s recent musings on the subject.

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Can any mom have it all?

I recently read online Why PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi Can’t Have It All, where Nooyi admits her own faults as a mom trying to balance career success with motherhood. What she said made the insecure stay-at-home mom in me doing a little mom-jig. She may be wealthy and successful, but she isn’t a great mom, either. All the years of insecurity about missing my calling as a career woman faded. I haven’t had it all, but she hasn’t either.

Fifteen years ago, I stood in a mall elevator with my four small kids, smiling back at a middle aged woman next to us. My newborn twins napped in the double stroller, my older kids held onto the side of the stroller as instructed, and I rummaged through the diaper bag for my phone.

Elevator woman gazed benevolently at the babies, “Aw, how old are they?”

“The twins are six weeks and,” I patted my son and daughter’s heads, “five and three.” The woman nodded politely and gave a little wave to my daughter who peered from behind her new stuffed puppy. Then, my son started banging on the buttons, my phone rang on full volume and both babies screamed awake. As I searched for pacifiers, the doors opened and my son and daughter bolted out.

Elevator woman said as she held the door for me, “Wow. Better you than me. If I were you, I’d shoot myself in the head.”

Yeah, she really said that.

Needless to say, the choice to stay home and raise four kids came with judgment from a spectrum of elevator people, movie theater people, waiting room people, neighborhood people, and even family people. And, to really give grit to people’s comments, we went and had a fifth kid! That really crossed the line. Deep down inside, though, I judged myself right along with them. How could I do this many kids and myself justice?

The answer is – I couldn’t.

When we got married twenty two years ago, my husband and I agreed that I would stay home to raise our hypothetical two kids for the first few years. But, after graduating with honors from college, I felt pings, and sometimes stabs, of regret being stuck at home pregnant while my friends went to graduate school and built careers. Still, I knew the end was in sight. I would go to law school soon, then our neatly packaged life would commence.

The wrapping on that package fell off when I set foot in a law school classroom. During lectures and readings of case briefs, my mind wandered to nursery rhymes. I knew someone else was nuzzling my baby girl’s fuzzy head while she took her bottles, and someone else was reading Dr. Seuss to my toddler son. So, I put the legal dictionary I’d just purchased at the university bookstore on the shelf, and went back to play dates and nap time and rolling out Play Doh snakes in the afternoons.

Just one more year with the kids, and then I’ll reenroll.

Then the twins happened, and the package completely unraveled. And the comments began:

Four kids? Wow. Are you Catholic or Mormon?

Did you plan this many kids?

Haven’t you figured out how this happens yet?

Not wanting to get arrested, I kept my fist to myself and ignored strangers. Family, though, I couldn’t escape.

My husband is Indian, and true to a stereotypical Indian family, nearly everyone our age is a health care professional of some sort. His Indian friends and cousins had semi-arranged marriages to good Indian wives. Both worked, and the guys’ parents took care of their one or two kids. At family dinners, men and women alike chatted about medical or dental crap that I could care less about, while I silently spooned spicy daal and rice into my mouth. When I was younger, people asked me when I was going to finish law school. After the twins, I think they benignly wrote me off. Not only was I white, I wasn’t a professional something-or-other.

Or was I just judging myself?

I’ve thrown myself into raising my kids, and until recently, forgot I was a person outside of being a mom. I’ve been room mom, field trip chaperone, classroom helper, chauffeur, and room mom. I’ve spent entire mind-numbing school days at driving around town to find the right soccer cleats, and shopping for the perfect teacher appreciation gifts. I’ve been bored, stressed, and craved conversations about something other than my kids. I’ve yelled at them, I’ve nagged them, and I’ve cried when they’ve told me they hate me. But, I’ve also gotten the good stuff.

When the school nurse calls me about a sick kid, I am the one that gets to hold a cool cloth on their foreheads when I bring them home. When they come home from a long day of middle school drama, I am the one they share their frustrations with as we sit at the kitchen counter and eat a bowl of popcorn. And when they forget a major research paper because they were up all night typing it and forgot it on the printer, I get to save their butts and bring it to them at school.

My kids are now 20 and 18, with the twins at fourteen, and the youngest is seven. I’ve found myself once again now, not as a lawyer, but as a writer, and I crave the excitement I feel crafting my own future on the page. Would my kids say I was a great mom to them because I stayed home to raise them? Hell no. I guess they get to have it all, either.

Who gets to have it all? I don’t think anyone ever does. Fulfillment is different for the Indras of the world, for the cousins and friends, for the elevator people and all the rest. And that’s okay. I just do my best to accept and be peaceful with all the little choices that add up to my life. I love as much as I can, and like we all do, I always, always search to create something sweet to look forward to.

The post Can Any Mom Have it All? Guest Post by Sheryl Parbhoo appeared first on Masala Chica.