On Children, and War
- Liza
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Last week, on a day when I was supposed to go to the library but ended up staying home after taking a quick look out my window – snow? sleet? rain? The darkest of skies, whatever it was, - I found myself eating lunch shortly before 2 pm, just in time for Fresh Air.
I love Fresh Air and Terry Gross and used to be a regular listener, a good twenty years ago. I remember listening while making dinner, after a long day in the library. Those days when I would spend hours in the stacks to write my dissertation, and actually wrote my dissertation. Unlike today, when I still go to the library but spend most of my time responding to emails and making appointments for various children.
See how easily I digress? That's what I did not do as much twenty years ago.
So, back to Fresh Air.
It now airs on WNYC in the early afternoon, which is not usually a time when I am available for it. My daily shows are Morning Edition and the BBC World Service, which have become a necessity while I clean up breakfast, run laundry and make all the beds in the house – swearing every morning that it is the last time I tidy up the teenagers’ rooms. But again, that’s another topic.
Back to Fresh Air again.
Eating at 2 pm that day could only mean one thing: I was home when I probably shouldn’t have, and I had been fighting procrastination all morning, before finally tackling my Gmail inbox and catching up on some minor administrative tasks.
And the trouble is, catching the show meant more procrastination, as I found myself listening to it in its entirety after swearing that I would just see who was on that day.
As much as I was beating myself up for not following through on my plan for the day, however, I couldn’t turn off the radio.
Because, it turned out, the guest was Lynsey Addario, a Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalist for the New York Timesand National Geographic.
Addario is the subject of a new Disney+ movie entitled Love + War, with centres on her “struggle to balance the challenges of covering conflict zones with the responsibilities of being a mother”, according to the channel’s website.
Indeed, the reason the show caught my attention, besides the fact that I once had the fleeting dream of becoming a photojournalist or a “grand reporter” as we call it in France, was a clip that was played a few minutes before to lure listeners.
In the teaser, Addario said, with the clear, deep voice that pulled me in right away: “It’s easier to be at war than to be with my children”.
Wow.
That one really shifted something in me. Now I really had to listen.
Not just because, as I first thought, I would hear about a woman who managed to do what I haven’t done.
A woman who follows her passion and built exactly the career she wanted AND also has children.
My current work situation, or absence thereof, has been the lens through which I have looked at everything lately, often in the unpalatable form of envy and a pervasive feeling of helplessness if not downright discouragement and self-hate.
And here was a woman about my age, with two boys a bit older than my two younger ones, who does a job I once found utterly fascinating – I did apply to a prestigious journalism school when my second child was a baby and it didn’t work out, - and spends weeks on end covering war in the most far-flung places of the globe. As someone who likes few things more than traveling and feeling displaced, this was awe-inspiring enough.
Of course, the point of the movie, which I haven’t seen yet, is apparently to illustrate how challenging it is for Addario to balance this itinerant and life-threatening occupation with motherhood. It sounds like the recurring tensions around her assignments and the way they affect both her children and husband, are one of the main issues candidly shown in the film. Of course they are, and Addario is deeply honest about how torn she is in her daily life.
She also says just as clearly, however, that it is much easier for her, and mostly much more enjoyable, to be on assignment in the most dangerous places on earth, than it is to be home with her children.
And I so, so appreciated this candor.
For someone who has spent the best part of the past three years at home, and who once aspired to have an exciting, creative career along the lines of what Addario has made possible for herself, her words hit close.
On the one hand, it hurt.
It was hard to hear someone who stayed true to her original vision and carved a space for herself where she can do true, meaningful work she enjoys – and also happens to shape the perceptions of hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide.
Yes, I wish I were that woman, that mother. And I am not.
In fact, my life, against all expectations, has become quite the opposite.
I am now home full time with four children aged seven to seventeen, and I struggle every day to end up on this page, to just sit at my desk for more than twenty minutes without distractions, even when the children are in school.
I lead a very domestic life and write about children and cooking, for God’s sake!
Meanwhile a mom out there is documenting massacres in Lybia, in Darfur, in Ukraine.
So, yes, it hurts.
But, on the other hand, I am so grateful to Addario for saying these words and not apologizing for them.
Because staying home with children is hard.
You all know it, the moms out there.
When I was teaching, I did find it much easier than being home with the kids. I had a nanny then, whose help was necessary and justified. I miss having a nanny every single day.
I have felt drained, and scattered, and resentful for the better part of a year after I moved back here from France.
I find myself dreading the after-school time of the day and like I mentioned yesterday, I often need a few minutes to myself, just to breather or cry, upon coming home with my boys at 4 pm every day.
Addario stated the obvious so clearly: when she is at work, even if it involves running around under bombs, she knows exactly what to do. She gets into a flow, and her body and mind take her exactly where she needs to go. She is focused and fully present AND she gets recognition and applause afterwards for the remarkable pictures she took at the risk of her own life. OK, I’m adding this last part about the recognition and applause, but I’m sure it’s part of the equation, obviously.
At home, on the other hand, as she puts it quite well, everything is organized around her children’s needs, their moods and unavoidable frustrations. She feels scattered and pulled in a million directions, trying to be a good mother while juggling all the demands her work puts on her even when she’s back home.
She just feels better, and more herself, behind her camera’s viewfinder.
I’m extrapolating of course, but that is in substance what she said, and you might want to listen for yourself:
It just felt so good to hear it.
That the reason I’ve been feeling so exhausted and bitter, despite having children and not babies or toddlers anymore – the reason YOU, moms, have been exhausted on the weekend, or after work, - is that it’s just hard to be around one’s children sometimes. Especially if it’s most of the time.
And it IS important to find the place where we flow, where we feel accomplished and whole, where life can be exciting again and be a life WE build for ourselves.
I know it all sounds so trite and obvious. And it is to me too, in theory. But hearing it stated so simply, by such an accomplished and inspiring woman, was a stark reminder of where our true work lies, and a huge relief.
Of course, we all love our children and wouldn’t change that aspect of our lives for the world – even if sometimes we feel like we really would.
But we can be guilty of overdoing it – at least I have, – of putting too much emphasis on our children at the expense of our own wellbeing as adults.
Later this week I started reading the best-selling book by Madeleine Levine, Teach your children well.
I have felt quite lost and confused over my oldest son’s college application process and how to support him – or how not to communicate my crippling anxiety to him, to be precise. So, I have turned to books, and this one does help me. There was one passage I retained, that I will try to use a guide for the weeks and months to come. We are still quite far from the civil war front in Sudan, where Lynsey Addario is hoping to go on her next assignment.
But in my situation, I can only start small, and I invite you to do the same, if you feel so inclined.Because, remember, being a mother CAN feel harder than war.
It is okay to think it. It is okay to say it.
It is okay to try to get to a place that feels easier for us, wherever that place may be for each of us.
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