Go Ahead, Honey, Get Arrested...But don’t forget to pick up the children, and make sure to be home in time for dinner.

Last Monday morning I walked into my office at the U.S. Department of the Interior and found an urgent phone message stuck to my computer screen. The president of the board of Ozone Action, the anti-climate-change environmental group my husband founded and runs, had called. “Urgent, please call back,” the message read. “Everything’s OK.”

Minutes later, I learned that my husband was the first person to be arrested in last week’s World Bank/International Monetary Fund action. As he finished a speech on the roof of a Budget van, he was locked into metal handcuffs in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and 19th Street in Washington.

I was running to a meeting where I had to decide what extraordinary security precautions the Interior Department would take against the threat of thousands of angry protesters descending on the World Bank, two blocks away. My job was to make the decisions that would safeguard our historic building and protect our employees from . . . my husband.

“Are you OK?” asked the board chairman in response to my sputtering reaction. “Do you want me to call you back with updates during the day?”

“There’s only one thing I need to know,” I seethed. “Will he be home for dinner?”

Globalization is starting to get me down.

In December, I was jostled and gassed in the streets of Seattle during the World Trade Organization meet. In my two days there as head of the Interior Department’s lonely delegation of two, I missed almost every meeting and found myself trapped in intersections by chanting students wearing balaclavas or dressed as giant ears of corn and sea turtles.

I vowed not to put myself in that situation again. Now, I was in that same situation. Only different. Instead of looking around, trying to find someone in charge to help me, I was the one in charge. Instead of trying to avoid the demonstrators, I was sleeping with one.

*

My husband believes the World Bank funds projects that contribute to the changing of the Earth’s climate, an enormous and scary global problem. And I believe that civil disobedience is a grand American tradition, practiced by heroes such as Sam Adams, Henry Thoreau and John Lewis.

So why was I so angry at him? Maybe I got mad because I also believe that when you are a parent, getting arrested to make a political statement is only something you do if you can’t help it. If you are in jail even for a few hours, your daughter could get sick at day care and the teacher could call you to pick her up and you wouldn’t be able to.

A jailed husband kicked up an ill wind that threatened to blow down the house of cards we built to get the family through each day. And then there was the annoying fact that while I was attending meetings with a very concerned security staff trying to keep order, my husband was the first one who was seriously out of order. Wouldn’t the staff here assume that it would be more difficult for me to make good decisions when my husband’s judgment, not to mention his behavior, was highly suspect? In a town ruled by perception, this had the makings of a serious problem.

At a meeting later in the day, a colleague sidled up to me and without a word wrote “SUSPECTED SECURITY BREACH” on his note pad with a giant arrow pointing at me. Funny guy.

I’ve worked at the Interior Department since the beginning of the Clinton administration, helping protect parks, wildlife and other natural treasures. John started Ozone Action in the third floor of our Alexandria, Va., townhouse. It has grown into the largest group in the country working on climate change.

I don’t like when he criticizes the president or the vice president, but other than that, we agree. Now he was doing his job and I was doing mine and we were colliding head-on.

He chose to break the law. I chose to work within it.

And complicating matters further were our two lovely daughters, happily playing at a day-care facility not far from the Interior Building and the World Bank. While we were busy breaking and upholding the law during this week of protest, who was going to take them home and heat up their frozen pizza?

When I began to compare the important philosophical questions with the small concerns of our daily lives, the big issues started to seem self-absorbed. After all, how can you save the world if you can’t pick your kids up from school?

John was released from jail three hours after he was booked--his legal representation, bail money and moral support during this self-imposed tribulation were all provided with military-like efficiency by the protest organizers. That was good, because I wasn’t prepared to offer any of that. He arrived home with a marital record-breaking bouquet of flowers, easily $150 worth of roses, day lilies and foxglove.

*

The next morning, our toddler woke up with a fever, and John quickly volunteered to stay home. Monday in jail, Tuesday rocking a sick baby to sleep. I started to feel better. He didn’t come home wearing a black ski mask, so I figured he wouldn’t be making a career of eco-terrorism. “Good Morning America” called for an interview. John told them they were welcome to come to our house, but he wouldn’t be making it into the city that day. I told him he would score major points with me if he did the interview with the baby on his lap. (He got big points for that but lost a couple for her weird hairdo.)

At work, I made a preemptive strike on the rumor mill by declaring at our political staff meeting that I was happy to announce my husband had been released from jail.

“And now,” I continued, “let me update you on the security measures for our building.”

Everyone laughed. I was starting to see the humor, too. Inklings of pride found their way into my heart. Several co-workers sought me out to congratulate me on John’s action, offering versions of “somebody’s got to be out there raising questions about this stuff.”

Civil disobedience is a grand American tradition. But so is getting home to have dinner with your family. Few people have the courage to get on top of a truck to make a political point and risk arrest for it. My husband is one of them.

Though I am loath to admit it, my husband’s actions are, in some way, a demonstration of his fitness as a parent. One day, our daughters will learn the names of people we honor for their willingness to break the law for their beliefs . . . and one of them will be their father’s.

Guide is the deputy assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior.