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Muddling AlongBy Jennifer GrantOn Labor Day, I sit with a few friends around my kitchen counter while my husband makes mojitos. He loves to use the verb “to muddle,” as in “Let me just muddle the mint and I’ll have these drinks ready in a minute.”The big kids play basketball out front; the little ones—under my 11-year old’s supervision—play in the basement. My husband presses limes, cracks open the club soda, and my friends and I—finally able to sit still for a moment after an afternoon chasing kids, slicing watermelon, and skewering shrimp and vegetables for the grill—watch him in silence, almost mesmerized. After a moment, the trance is broken. “What’s it like,” one friend asks, “to work when you have little kids at home?” “Sticky,” one friend says. “Exhausting,” says another. “It can be a welcome break, a kind of relief,” I say. “To use that part of your brain again. To be someone in the outside world again.” I glance over at my friend Katie, an accomplished actor and teacher who has just returned to work as a university professor. She keeps silent. I know she’s been struggling to make it all work—three kids ages four and younger, keeping the house reasonably organized, and spending time with a husband and children she loves. Her youngest is a baby, eight months old, not yet walking, and addicted to the thrill of wreaking destruction whenever he can. He pulls on electrical cords, reaches past the tray of his high chair to the kitchen table, pulling on the cloth, knocking over glasses and upending a bowl of Caesar salad faster than you can say, “Oh, no, baby! No!” “It’s confusing,” Katie admits. “I’m with you on sticky and exhausting and that it’s a kind of break to be back at work. But I sometimes feel like an imposter. Like I’m not the same person, that person, anymore after so many months at home. I lose my train of thought. I feel like my students can tell that I’m really only half-there.” We all assure her that it’s normal. That it takes time to learn to ignore the sour smell of spit up that radiates from your shoulder, even in your work clothes. It takes time to learn to act natural when your students’ papers stick to the back of your hand. You get back into practice in terms of finding your focus again. We all offer stories of embarrassing moments, forgotten appointments, and other wince-worthy moments. Katie sighs, deeply. We all raise our glasses to her. “We all just learn to muddle along,” I say, swirling the mint around in my glass.
Jennifer Grant was recently interviewed on Blog Talk Radio and is the author of Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter. Find her online at JenniferGrant.com.
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