Denver Airport Westin and Thoughts on Feminism

Last night I returned from a fast business trip to Denver. The total time from when I left my driveway to when I pulled back into it was 34-hours.

The meeting was held at a hotel that is connected to the Denver airport so it's kind of like I flew in and never left the airport. I rolled my suitcase across a breezeway from baggage claim and checked in at the front desk. I really liked the concept for a fast trip like this one.

I am so grateful to the people who helped out with the kids so I could go to work. It took three family members and one friend to keep our kids safe and going where they needed to go. Does that seem like a lot of helping hands pitching in for me to be gone less than a day and a half? Yes, it does.

I couldn't help thinking about the irony as I was trying to cover all the bases for my tiny trip compared to the fact that later this month Brian goes to L.A. for five days -- FIVE -- yet, he won't need to make one phone call or spend one minute worrying about who will take care of his kids while he is gone.

The enormity of that came crashing down on me this week.

Growing up, I was given the impression that "feminism" was a dirty word. Men provide and women raise the kids and keep the home. End of the story. I get that men and women are different and I embrace it. However, in the last few years, my world view has been changing and it's hard not to feel sadness bubbling up when I think about the vast disparity in equality that exists.

I guess this is the blog post where some of these feelings that have been building up for years come pouring out of me.

When I was in college, I worked in the student services center. Occasionally my boss brought his baby to work with him because the babysitter cancelled last minute and it was "his turn" to take responsibility. He and his wife both worked full time. With the lens through which I viewed the world at that time, I didn't know how to make sense of such a liberal arrangement.

Now, twenty years, four kids, and a lot of lessons from the school of hard knocks later I find myself thinking this:

1) Traditional gender roles don't work for a lot of people for a lot of reasons.

I had a longer list -- but, there is so much to say that I don't know where to start and where to stop. I can sum it up in that one sentence and say that this realization has caused so many conflicting emotions and so much confusion about my own choices in my life. It is hard to sort out. I could go on for one million words and some of my thoughts would go in endless circles.

Once the lens through which I view the world changed, I started to see inequality all around me. It encroaches in so many subtle ways.

The realization that Brian has had 100% freedom to pursue his career goals and life aspirations every minute of every day since he became a father, in terms of actually leaving the house, and neither one of us has even acknowledged the profound gift this is that I have given to him for 15-years now hit me like a ton of bricks. I can't even imagine what that would feel like to be able to go out and take care of business knowing that my kids were 100% cared for 100% of the time without me having to ask anyone to do it and without feeling guilty about having to ask. Incomprehensible. Yet, that is the expectation both of us have had from our relationship all this time.

I am so grateful to the friends and family who kept our kids the last two days, not just so I could work, but so BOTH of us could equally go and do the things we needed to do to keep our family going.  I can see that I have a lot of work to do to change my thinking and my behavior so I can break this hurtful cycle and be a better example to my kids.

It's been a tough journey. It took me a long time to accept that I am a working mom and still a good person. I embrace that now, but there is a long journey ahead to figure out what all of this means in terms of redefining the way our household is managed.

I think the difficulty is partly due to the fact that both Brian and I were raised by stay at home moms, all of our friends were raised by stay at home moms and all of our aunts and grandmas were stay at home moms. Neither of us has a model of how this is suppose to work. I am beginning to see that my boss back in college all those years ago understood something important that I am just now beginning to understand.