Mary Louise Kelly - It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs

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For James and Alexander

My beautiful boys

If you find a book you really want to read but it hasnt been written yet, then you must write it.

TONI MORRISON

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they shouldve behaved better.

ANNE LAMOTT

My agent called, as agents do, to nudge.

Working on anything? Any chapters for me to read?

I wish, I sighed. Im way too busy. The newsroom remains bonkers. Just relentless. Im flat out, all day every day.

Of course you are. But in the evenings, on the weekends

I cant.

What about a short book? Say, just ten chapters.

No, seriously. Especially now. This year of all years.

What? This year of all What does that mean?

James is about to be a senior. Hes about to turn eighteen. This is my last shot. Ive missed so muchso many of his games and concerts and science fairs and field tripsbecause I was working. And I always told myself, Next year Ill be there . Well, Im out of next years. This is it. My last chance to show up. To be present. This is the year of no more do-overs.

A pause.

Thats it, she said. Thats the book. Youve got to write it.

Here goes.

These days I count the weeks. Before, it was months. Soon it will be days.

Im counting the time left before my oldest child leaves home. The time left that the four of us will live together, under this roof, intact as a family. The time leftlets just come out and say itfor me to make a different choice.

This child, whose name is James, loves soccer. Always has. Theres a photo of him, age oneone!tiny soccer ball at his feet and huge grin on his face. Barely able to walk and already learning to dribble. Now fast-forward sixteen years. Hes a starting striker on his high school varsity team. He lives for these games. This is a boy so catastrophically, irredeemably messy that even his younger brother, also a teenager, gets grossed out by the chaos. This same boy clears a space in the debris to carefully lay out his uniform the night before a game. Cleats, shin guards, cherished jersey, number 7, all washed and arranged at right angles at the foot of his bed. Game time arrives and the whistle blows and James plays his heart out.

At least, this is what I am told. Varsity games tend to happen on weekdays, around four p.m. Want to know what else happens on weekdays at four p.m.? NPRs All Things Considered goes on air. Technology makes possible many once impossible things, but our broadcast engineers have yet to figure out how I might anchor a daily national news program from the bleachers. And so I miss his games. Nearly every one of them. James is actually, mostly, okay with this. His dad attends every game he can; the other parents cheer James on; he comes home and gives me the play-by-play at dinner. I am not so okay with this, but I console myself with the knowledge that there will always be another game. That next time Ill figure out a way to be there, deadlines be damned, screaming myself hoarse on the sidelines.

Except that the years slip by. Ninth grade slides into tenth slides into eleventh. Suddenly, James is a senior. Im out of next times. There are no more do-overs.

I swear there are a million well-meaning books about the juggle and work-life balance and leaning in and leaning out and how you can have it all just maybe not all at once. Start reading, though, and youll find theyre nearly all aimed at young parents at the beginning of the whole enterprise. Tome after tome of encouragement and advice for new moms drowning in hormones and guilt in their office cubicles, because their phones have lit up with a picture from day care or the nanny, of their kid happily eating his first banana. And theyre missing it and its only a damn banana but theyll never get that moment back . Sister, Ive been there.

But here is the thing I did not know: the tug is just as strong when your baby is seventeen as when he is seven weeks or seven months. For me, it is in fact stronger. You blink and the finish line is in sight. Young parents, listen to me: It. Goes. So. Fast.

Most of the working mothers I know have made a pact with themselves. When the job and the kids collide, the kids come first. I have pushed back from the anchor chair in Studio 31, NPRs main studio, in the middle of a live broadcast and announced to my cohost and to the startled director, Ive got to go. One cannot get away with this often. But when a text rolls in from the babysitter and it begins, Were in the emergency room, you stand up, and you run.

Another moment: Iraq, 2009. Im in Baghdad, part of the Pentagon press pool covering a visit by the U.S. secretary of defense. Were all suited up in body armor and helmets, and were being herded toward Black Hawk helicopters that will fly us to the next press conference, when my cell phone rings. Its the school nurse back in Washington. She wants to tell me that my sonthe other one, Alexander, then four years oldis sick. Really sick. How fast can I get there? The day after tomorrow would have been the accurate response, but the line mercifully went dead before I had to deliver it. I cried myself to sleep that night in Baghdad. Not long after, I quit my job.

I would not have believed it at the time, but these are the easy calls. Your phone delivers a panicked summons; your heart thrums with love for your child; you stand up and you run. I was a journalist before I was a parent. It is in my bones. But while there are many people who can report the news, there is only one person on this planet who can be mother to my children. It has taken me a long time to understand that the hard calls, the ones that may come back to haunt you, are the ones that accumulate in the vast gray space between the drama of a nurse tracking you down in Iraq and the routine Thursday afternoon unfolding of a high school soccer game. I dont stand up and sprint from the studio for the latter because there are so many of them. Were so many of them.

Im aware that Im lucky to have a choice in how I spend my time. And I dont presume to judge others whove chosen differently, or who seem at peace with their choices. Hats off. (Only could you please write the next book and clue the rest of us in on how its done?) I also know that not everyone reading this is a mother. Not everyone reading this is a parent. This is my story. Yours will be different. What we have in common is the knowledge that there will never be enough hours in the day or enough years on this earth to do everything we came here to do.

This is the last year, ever, that my firstborn is guaranteed to live under the same roof as me. Its also the year I lost my dad, and the year I turned fifty, and the year we all began to emerge from a pandemic that rendered our lives unrecognizable. If all thats not a ripe opportunity for reflection, I dont know what is.

So: This is a book about what happens when the things we lovethe things that define and sustain uscome into conflict. Its a book about the unsettling but exhilarating feeling of glimpsing that life as we know it is about to swerve. I have no idea what the transition to an empty nest will look like. As a professional interviewer, Ive learned that one of the worst questions you can ask someone is Whats your prediction for whats going to happen in the future? The only remotely honest answer the poor soul can give is, Who the hell knows?