For years, I imagined the glory and wonder of not having to work. I pictured freedom and choices, sunny days, walks on beaches, long lunches, and friends. I’d get up in the morning, the day stretched before me, glowing with opportunity and anticipation, mine to shape and fill in any way I liked. I hadn’t anticipated not knowing what to do with my time. I hadn’t appreciated the goals and structure a job gave me either. Nor had I contemplated the struggle to define myself as others looked longingly in my direction.
When my maternity leave ended, I left Microsoft to be with Emily. I wanted to be with our daughter, and there was no financial reason to return to my job. In many ways, the decision was obvious. But as the Microsoft doors closed behind me for good, I began to realize my identity was caught up in work.
Work had always been an important part of my life. I’d wanted to be like my father, rushing out the door in the morning with business to accomplish, returning in the evening, admired and respected. During high school, I’d worked at a roadside fruit stand, sorting produce and serving customers. Summers during college, I filled in for the receptionist, the mail guy, and various secretaries at an insurance agency in Portland, happy to be helping. Then, after graduating from college, I taught English in Tokyo for two years, experiencing a new culture before moving to Seattle and working my way into that advertising agency. At Microsoft, as a recruiter and a member of a product group, I loved being on a team, connected and involved, solving problems and getting things done. When people asked, “What do you do?” I answered with pride.
In the 1990s, when I left Microsoft, women were supposedly breaking through the glass ceiling, able to have it all. But it wasn’t easy to be a mother with a career. Fathers rarely took a fifty-fifty role in childcare or household management, and the long hours required to succeed within a high-powered workplace were not compatible with pregnancy, childbirth, maternity leave, and a baby. To make the situation worse, mothers like Lynn, Donna, and me, who had the luxury of choice, competed with one another. Perhaps we were all trying to justify our decisions, but mothers who worked looked down on those who stayed home and vice versa, each making snide comments like, “I simply need to use my brain,” or “I can’t imagine leaving my child.”
When her maternity leave ended, Lynn was thrilled to return to the recruiting department at Microsoft. She craved the stimulation of being in an office and wanted to keep her skills up to date. Bringing home a paycheck gave her satisfaction as well. Donna was working too. But unlike Lynn, who was content with her position, Donna wanted to advance and was frustrated by her inability to work at the same pace and level as before her daughter was born. Although Microsoft policies were family-friendly, most employees were single, male, and eager to spend eighty hours in the office every week. Even in HR, the one department where women were in the majority, men dominated the culture. Or, at least, the culture was dominated by employees who didn’t have children. No one left early or came in late. Managers did not display photos of babies on their desks or talk about being parents.
“I’m not doing anything well,” Donna told me. “I’m not a good mom or a good employee, and it’s annoying that nothing has changed for Matt.”
Even though Donna’s job was as meaningful to her as Matt’s was to him, whether by choice, default, or the power of cultural norms and gender roles, Donna was the one scrambling to get to the daycare by six o’clock. She was also planning the evening meals, buying groceries, and doing the cooking.
“My life is being held together by a rubber band,” she said. “One wrong move and ‘snap!’”
I empathized with Donna and was thankful to be at home with Emily. Conventional wisdom of the time dictated that children were better off with a parent at home, and as a rule follower, I was glad to be doing the “right” thing. It was fun to take Emily to music class and Gymboree. What’s more, with no impending workweek, I experienced Sunday evenings in a whole new, stress-free way. Weekday mornings were more relaxed too. But I missed my job. When the alarm on David’s side of the bed went off and he headed to the office, driven by the excitement of adding new offerings to Amazon’s product line, I felt left behind. It also bothered me not to be contributing to our family financially. I wasn’t bringing home a paycheck. I’d cashed in my options. Even though the cost of a household manager, nanny, and cook gave my presence at home monetary value, being a wife and mother made me feel like a second-class citizen.
Our growing wealth only added to my angst. Given David’s continued success, we were often invited to exclusive, business-related or fundraising events where I found myself standing with a cocktail in my hand, chatting with overachievers, dreading the question, “What do you do?” It could be an honest attempt to get acquainted and find common ground, but this question made me nervous. What did I do? Who was I anyway? Was it enough to just be a mother at home? Should I return to work? What was my purpose? Did I have any value?
As a mom at home, I was on a path most people in business didn’t understand or respect. Hearing, usually from a man who would never consider leaving work, that caring for children was the most important job a person could do, I felt as though I was getting a pat on the head, not the back. I hated imagining people looking at me as a high net worth individual or worse, as the wife of a rich husband. At one fundraising dinner, seated next to Howard Schultz, then CEO of Starbucks, I considered talking about rationing my lattes, but ended up making small talk, feeling like someone who had slipped in as “. . . and guest.”
Decades later, my brother would say he thought our wealth robbed me of the opportunity to prove myself. Without a job, I didn’t get the chance to feel successful. In many ways, he was right. I missed out on a career. For years, I longed for the sense of accomplishment in achieving business goals and missed the camaraderie of being part of a team, doing what people do, working together, involved in something bigger than myself. At the same time, I’d made the choice to be home with our daughter, and I would make it again.
Looking for a sense of purpose and a way to connect with other new mothers, I explored volunteer options. When I discovered a nonprofit that worked with pregnant teens, I signed up to be a mentor. After going through a brief training program, I was paired with Keiko, an eighteen-year-old from Japan who had come to the United States as a student, gotten pregnant, and was planning to stay. When we first got together, I trotted out one of the few Japanese phrases I remembered from my time in Tokyo, “A train is approaching. Please stand behind the yellow line. It’s dangerous to get too close.” Hearing this, Keiko laughed, and a connection formed between us.
During the weeks that followed, I drove Keiko to the hospital for checkups and showed her how to get vouchers for formula. We spent time at the park, playing with Emily and talking about pregnancy. Highly aware of the disparity between us, I wanted to take her out for lunch, offer her cash, and buy clothes and toys for her coming baby, but the nonprofit that brought us together didn’t allow volunteers to give financial assistance.
When the programmed three months of our time together ended, Keiko and I had each benefited from knowing the other. But we lost touch when she moved to Los Angeles with her boyfriend. Soon after, I signed up to become a leader of a PEPS group like my own, and again went through a training course to learn about facilitating discussions and ensuring everyone felt heard.
“It’s too bad we can’t bring our babies with us when we lead a group,” a fellow trainee said to me the last day. “I’ll have to wait until the summer when my mom can watch my son.”
“It’s nice your mom is nearby,” I said. “I don’t know what I’ll do. It’s hard to imagine leaving my daughter with a stranger. Do you know any good daycares?”
“What? Daycare? But you aren’t working,” she said. “How can you justify paying for daycare?”
She looked at me in disbelief.
“How can you afford it?” she continued. “Are you really going to pay someone else so you can work for free?”
Her astonishment was understandable. So was her exasperation. She was clearly irritated to imagine me paying someone to watch Emily. Wasn’t I supposed to have just learned to empathize with others? Did I completely lack discretion? Was I always going to make other people uncomfortable? Embarrassed, I mumbled something about being lucky and rushed out the door.
Unlike Donna and Lynn, who had socially acceptable reasons to put their daughters in daycare, I wasn’t working and didn’t need to leave Emily with strangers. Was I being selfish, shirking my responsibility? Would Emily be okay? Unsure of the answer, but eager to lead a PEPS group, I toured a few day-cares. And when I discovered a place with wonderful caregivers, I signed Emily up for two mornings a week and joined the day-care’s board, looking forward to getting involved.
Leading a mothers’ group was rewarding. My presence was a benefit to eighteen new moms and their babies. Every week, I facilitated discussions and made sure everyone felt heard and included. But over time, rather than becoming part of the growing companionship that was forming among the women in the group, since leaders weren’t supposed to talk about their own experiences, I found myself on the outside again.
One day, a friend asked me to join her for a tour of Pike Place Market, Seattle’s historic marketplace near the waterfront. Tim Kelley, a young chef from The Painted Table, a highly regarded restaurant, led our group through the market’s produce stalls and showed us how to choose the freshest ingredients. He then took us to The Painted Table for a cooking demonstration and lunch. As I stood in the restaurant’s kitchen, watching Tim seed, chop, and squeeze tomatoes through cheesecloth to extract “tomato water,” I wanted to get to work. I’d always loved cooking and was intrigued by the restaurant business. It looked fun to be part of the kitchen team. Once the demonstration was over and lunch had been served, I summoned my courage and asked Tim if he could use a helper for a day, thrilled when he agreed to let me work for free.
A few weeks later, after dropping Emily at daycare, I drove directly to The Painted Table where Tim gave me a brief tour of the kitchen, handed me five blackened red peppers, showed me how to remove the char, and left me alone to complete the task. When Tim returned half an hour later, he thanked me and gave me another assignment chopping several pounds of mushrooms.
I was focused on my job when the lunch staff arrived. Soon, the first order swung through the door in the form of a waiter who clipped a white paper to a rotating steel ring, turned, and disappeared. As more orders followed, a circus began. The team juggled fire, whipped sauces, and threw burning pans into the sink. Jokes were cracked, demands shouted, and obscenities flew. Three hours passed in an instant. Then, just as quickly as it reached a rolling boil, the kitchen was back to a slow simmer, and Tim suggested I make myself lunch.
“Cook anything you want,” he said before disappearing out the swinging door.
Alone in the kitchen, I stepped up to the stove, planning to copy the wilted spinach salad Debbie, the lunchtime sous chef, had prepared with the mushrooms I’d chopped. When my dish was ready, I ate standing up, hungry for more. A four-hour stint wasn’t nearly long enough. So, I tracked Tim down, thanked him profusely, and asked if I could return every Friday. He agreed.
Over several months of Fridays, my de-charring and chopping skills improved, and I graduated to preparing the pasta to order. Grabbing for olive oil, minced garlic, and julienned vegetables, I jumped into the lunchtime fire, thrilled to be creating a dish that would be served to a customer in the dining room. Deploying my new skills and losing myself in my work, I was reminded of Joseph Conrad’s quote from Heart of Darkness: “I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”
Debbie appeared proud of her job. In her late twenties, with jet-black hair and a pierced upper lip, she was confident and tough. It wasn’t easy to be a woman in a professional kitchen, and she’d proven herself by moving up the ranks. She clearly had a passion and talent for her work. Searing a hunk of fish in oil, sliding the pan into the oven, then sensing when it was done, she removed the fillet from the heat, placed it artfully on a bed of crushed fingerling potatoes, added herbs and a drizzle of oil, and yelled for a waiter. She wanted her dish served hot.
Rob, the guy at the grill, seemed to enjoy his work. He showed up promptly at eleven o’clock to churn out tasty-looking plates with efficiency and focus. He was also generous with smiles and advice, often sharing recipes and telling me anecdotes about life as a chef. When lunch was over and dinner was prepped, he headed out the door.
“I love doing this. It’s stress-free,” he told me. “I’ve been head chef in other places, but it’s more fun to work the grill. I get to hang out. I get paid. And I don’t have any responsibility.”
Meanwhile, Tim, a rising star, was king of the kitchen. With a quick wit and dynamic personality, he seemed driven to succeed, sweeping into the lunchtime scene issuing commands and demanding excellence. But he wasn’t satisfied. Several times, he asked me if he should invest in Microsoft and Amazon, and in the months to come, seemingly in search of further fame and fortune, he would move to New York City.
One morning, Rob asked why I was spending so much time in the kitchen. Afraid he had me pegged as an overly privileged housewife with too much time on her hands, I wasn’t sure what to say. The label fit. It was valid. But I was too uncomfortable with the truth to talk about my situation. Instead, I shrugged, saying I was lucky to have extra time. There was no way I could admit to being a rich woman, playing around at making lunch.
Looking back, I imagine my evasive non-answer was annoying. Rob wasn’t oblivious. It was probably irritating to hear me avoid the facts he’d likely surmised. I should have told him I was having fun in the kitchen, excited to be learning new skills, getting to know the team, and thankful for the stories and advice he’d shared. I should have acknowledged our crazy fortune too. I could have let him know it was strange. I could have shared more about my life with the PEPS group I was leading and been more authentic with the woman at the training session too. If I’d told her I was fortunate but found my situation odd and lonely, I might have come across as clueless and awkward, but at least I would have shown up and given her an opportunity to respond. Similarly, if I’d joked with Howard Schultz about rationing my lattes while working in advertising or talked about the transition from workplace to home, dinner conversation would have been a lot more enjoyable. As it was, it would take years to get comfortable as a stay-at-home mother and wealthy woman. I didn’t feel like either. It would also take years not to dread the question, “What do you do?”
Contemplation & Conversation
•Jennifer identified with her job and had a hard time feeling her value outside of the workforce. Do you identify with your work? In addition to a paycheck, what else do you get out of your job? If you’re not working, how do you define yourself?
•What is your experience with work and parenthood? Has one taken precedence over another? What role has money played in your decisions? How have you and your partner negotiated work, parenthood, and money?