Working Parents’ Juggling Act Is Tough One to Follow

You pay me to be pithy, but we all have bad days. Please, let me ramble.

As I’m typing this sentence, I’m supposed to be somewhere in three hours. In fact, I gotta be somewhere in three hours. The daughter of some friends is graduating from high school, and I promised to be at the ceremony. I have my admission ticket and her graduation present. And I really want to go. I’m a huge sucker for life’s passages. Unless she’s reincarnated, this will be the only time she graduates from high school. Plus, the starting time has been set for months, and they won’t delay it for me, even if I phone ahead and say I’m running late. Do you see my point?

I must get going.

Meanwhile, work intrudes. A large compilation of stomach acid gurgles within. A Wild Rivers theme park of tension began a couple hours ago and continues unabated. I’ve traced the problem to trying to get my work done in time to make the commencement. Even though I’ve known I needed to leave early tonight, that didn’t seem to speed me up. It seems to have slowed me down. Let’s say I’m choking under pressure.

It’s the same feeling I had a few weeks ago when the family invited me to another daughter’s softball game one night and a school function the next night.

I made the softball game almost on time but missed my friend’s first turn at bat because I couldn’t find the field. The next night, I came sliding into the school function like Kramer into Seinfeld’s apartment, out of breath and acting like I’d just missed something. In this case, I had--the band performance that included her playing the flute. Only the highlight of the evening.

Here’s my question: How do you parents do it?

I don’t mean that to sound as naive as it does. It’s not that I just discovered that school-age children have plays and softball games to which their parents should go. But those back-to-back nights opened my eyes. “So this is what it’s like being a parent?” I said to my friends. They chuckled at my decoding of one of life’s great truths.

On the night I was late for the school function, so many parents already had arrived that the hamburger line was too long to even consider joining. I was amazed at the turnout, reliving as I did my own fevered bid to finish up that day’s column, converse with the editor, do battle with freeway traffic, find a parking spot within two blocks of school and then jog over to the school grounds.

All that and still late!

No wonder we have such an edgy society. I picture a nation full of fathers and mothers scrambling to complete the workday while wondering if they can make it to little Jenny’s performance as the tree in her third-grade class’ production of “The Enchanted Forest.”

Then, while watching Jenny, their mind is racing back to the office, wondering about the mistakes made and the work left undone. That’s no way to enjoy a first-rate theatrical production.

The sad truth, of course, is that many parents don’t make it to the play. Deep down, they want to. They tell themselves that morning they’re going to make it, but by workday’s end, they’re still behind the eight-ball.

Most often, dear old Dad is the villain. Many former working women have quit their jobs in recent years after realizing that both they and their husbands were missing too many school performances. The women sacrificed good jobs, but none of the ones I know has regretted it.

Too bad for Dad. I never know whether to lament or curse professional men, usually in their 50s, who announce that they’re quitting so they “can spend more time with my family.” Guess what, dudes? Your children are now in their 20s. They’ve already grown up. “The Enchanted Forest” ended its run 15 years ago.

My recent brush with pseudo-parenthood makes me more sympathetic to the dads, though. After you’ve seen a few soccer matches and heard your son’s tuba solo, it’s probably easier to find excuses to stay at work. Not to mention the subtle or real pressure your boss is putting on you to stay the course. Mr. Dithers doesn’t always understand the imperatives in you attending the school bake sale, does he?

If we’re serious about this family-values business, the support has to come from the corporate level. Dad won’t be too keen about leaving work to catch the 5:30 softball game if he thinks the company will hold it against him. And what about working mothers? They usually have enough impediments without worrying about office debits against their name if they want to see the school play that starts at 7.

I suddenly see the stickiness of the problem with much clarity. So sticky is it that I’m unable to answer which kind of parent I would have been: the kind to risk all by bolting at 5 or the kind to explain to Jenny that night why there was an empty seat next to Mom.

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.