🥴 the paradox of my 40s.

or: how did trying to do everything so right lead to feeling like I'm doing nothing right.

I’m sitting on the Acela right now, enroute to Boston. But because I’m here, I’m not at either of my daughters’ Music Sharing sessions. Luckily my husband is going to our youngest’s and my mum is going to our eldest’s (because of course why put them at the same time for working parents when you could do one at 11am and the other at 2:30pm).

But this is actually a good day. I feel a pang anytime I miss something, but this is the reality of our lives and our choices. With two companies and two kids, “good” looks like a week when we know everything we need to do, we’re able to divide and conquer well and the big things don’t get missed.

Today is a day that everyone knew to wear the formal uniform and to bring the instruments. We knew it was happening early enough that we could talk over on Sunday who would take which shift. And today, we’re all doing the things we’re supposed to be.

Today is a good day. But they’re not all - missed reminders, last minute dashes, unintended shouting matches and tears.

Too many moments when I wonder: how are we meant to make this all work?

***

I did school when I was supposed to. Got married when I was supposed to. Had kids when I was supposed to. Kept going in being just as ambitious at 40 as I was at 20.

Because isn’t that what I was supposed to do? Pay my dues in my 20s, invest and build expertise in my 30s, to really hit my stride of my 40s?

And so I did. Along the way I was lucky enough to meet and marry my partner-in-crime at 29, after graduating from my MBA. We welcomed our first daughter at 31 as we wrapped a stint in Shanghai, and our second daughter at 34, a tidy 2 and 1/2 years later.

All so very average when looking backwards at the timestamps of my life.

I figured my 30s would those messy years with really young kids but it was okay because I was still building my career. Surely by the time I hit my 40s, things would start feeling less hard. Less crunched. Less frantic.

I always thought that the hardest part of parenting was while the kids were young. Like under-5 young. Sleepless nights, constant care, steep learning curve on all the things. And they certainly were. Hard enough.

But then my girls started school. And ushered in what really does feel like a “harder” phase.

We have less childcare help - where we once had our amazing Rosa and we handed the kids off to her each morning, we now have to cobble together drop-offs, pick-ups and after school care in what feels like a constantly hodgepodge way.

To say the “information” is like a daily firehose wouldn’t actually be so much of an exaggeration. Library book reminders, crazy sock days, basketball team reminders, late start, early dismissal… the joke goes it takes a full time job to just read the school emails. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragically true.

Then there are our schedules. I don’t know if it’s a post-covid thing or just the age of my kids thing but everyday feels like it’s scheduled to the gills. Even fun and spontaneity have to take a ticket and get on the calendar. Extracurriculars, social things, errands, work things… all fighting for billing, all jostling for attention. It doesn’t help that the kids’ commitments out number my husband and mine - all requiring a trusted driving adult to fulfill them. To say nothing of the fact our schedules are made harder for my frequent travel, a necessity because the locations that feed my ambition don’t match up with the place that fuels my family.

And topping it all off - it turns out I’d say our girls need us more now than they did when the were younger. I thought that my traveling for work when they were 4 and 2 was the complicated bit. But no. At that age, they just needed someone who loved them and could do all of the care things - feeding, playing, bathing. Those were the years of Care. Now? They’re the years of Character. At 9 and 11, it matters that it’s me or my husband hearing their little stories about the French test or the classmate who was unkind or the amazing shot they hit in tennis. That connection on the little things is what matters and I need to be there and present. To help them understand how to navigate this complicated world with the values and mental models of our family’s making.

So if you take all of that - more things with less help while being even more important, how is this all supposed to work? And worse, why does it feel like such a surprise? Hard I can do. It’s the unexpected and unending hard I’m struggling with.

We did what we were supposed to - what we love to do. My husband and I have found ourselves to each building companies we believe in deeply. We’re trying to be the partners to each other through all of the work and the life. And we have been so incredibly blessed to have these two lights in our life. These sparks who are bundles of joy and ideas and energy and feelings.

We worked hard to get to this point and we work hard everyday. But no matter how hard I work, it just doesn’t feel like it’ll ever add up.

Maybe I should have known to do the math. That having a kid at 31 would mean feeling the greatest crunch in my 40s.

But I never did that math and no one ever told me. Maybe because there were so few to do the telling and maybe because parenthood has changed so much in the last 15 years that the tale has changed irrevocably.

All I know is that it’s not just me. Everywhere I turn I see and hear the same.

The thing is: I think it’s possible. To have the career I love and the partner I can support and be supported by, and be the parent who can be present for the little stories and the big lessons (both ways). Because there are moments of it in my life today. Enough of them that I’m just greedy for them to make up the majority.

I think it takes people we trust and who love our kids as we do, I think it takes help that is built acknowledging modern realities and I think it take policies that see families as the core unit of society, not the individual.

All I know is that I did what I was supposed to. Every day I try to keep doing what I’m supposed to. And while I feel my fortune every morning and every night, I don’t accept that it should be so hard.

I’m not asking for easy. I don’t want easy. I never have.

I love our full, messy, imperfect life. I already know I will look back on these days with nostalgia.

But modern parenting should not be a paradox.