I don't Know how She Does It

I have watched a movie entitled “I don’t know how she does it” played by SJP (Sarah Jessica Parker). For some reason this movie gave me an idea about a working woman. SJP as Kate in this movie was someone who had a loving family and a high flying career. She was struggling to keep up with her demanding roles as a career woman, a wife and a mother. Nonetheless, she managed to be in an almost balanced state. Along the way she was tempted and seduced by her co-worker, almost lost the trust of her young daughter and had less and less quality time with her beloved husband. Even so, she tried hard enough to acknowledge her needs for self-recognition in having a fulfilling career and a loving family. She didn’t let an affair to ruin her life and opted to sacrifice a little time to be with her children. She stated that no matter how demanding her job was, she simply couldn’t quit a job she loved. 

How does it feel like to not having to choose between a family and a career? Is it really possible to scale the mountain and still have your family by your side? 

I once dreamed and I mean it is an ultimate dream that one day when I have my own family I will be a homemaker. I would like to participate in my children’s life especially in the first five years of their life. I want to sacrifice my day and night having to totally nurse them myself. I want to give them the affection I once missed as a child, and I want to expose them to the values I highly regarded in my own life. I want to build a balanced child who can give lights to the world because of his or her upbringing. There is no way I want to have a child and have someone else give them the values I don’t concede. I too want to be a wife who is totally into her husband wellbeing. That was my “dream”.

And then reality sinks in and I am caught between having to focus on something I wish for and something I already have and possibly could work on more for the future. A longing stirs my soul to be someone perhaps like SJP, working on a career I am truly capable of and raising a family I love. Is that something possible?

A memory in childhood came back. It was late in the afternoon when I squatted at the side of the road waiting for my ever hardworking mother to come home. I waited for so long when my father came by riding a bicycle and crushed my hopeful heart by telling me that mother wasn’t coming back that day. He took me back home. That memory stays like a neon light to remind me never ever to let my own child waits for me to come home.

Still in my selfish desire I wish to spend my youth breaking my bone doing something for my own pleasure. Is it wrong to think that way? Of wanting a little bit more of life outside home? Of becoming more than just a homemaker? Will I then eventually becomes the woman who once left her child and never get back her affection when she hopes to have it in her later life? What a pitiful woman I would become then…