For many working mothers, the next two weeks are about the equivalent of final-exam week for a college student, wedding week for the bride-to-be and your mother-in-law's first visit to your new home, all rolled into one.
To put it mildly, we are busy trying to make sure that we give our families a happy and memorable Christmas. Yet, we need to go full speed at our jobs.
Conversations with two friends this week made me feel like a piker for feeling overwhelmed by the list of tasks that awaits me.
One friend is a 40-something mother of two elementary-school-age children who is also pastor of a church. To say this is the busy season for her is an understatement. On her list of things to do in the next two weeks are: finish sewing matching mother-daughter outfits, write and deliver two Christmas Eve and one Christmas Day sermons, lead a church group in caroling to shut-ins, write her family's annual Christmas letter and address dozens of greeting cards, bake innumerable batches of cookies, wrap and deliver presents and fix a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.
Another friend, a Midwestern newspaper editor who has to work Christmas Eve, will prepare Christmas dinner for 14, complete with her mother's cherished silver, crystal and china, all of which my friend will personally polish and clean. Also, she will help her sister search for the hard-to-find Power Ranger dolls.
A recent study of women found that among the happiest ones were oarried working mothers who liked their child-care arrangements and had husbands who shared responsibilities around the house. Just slightly happier than the married working mothers were childless working women. Among the most depressed were mothers who had trouble getting good child care and get little help from their husbands.
I thought about this study this week after we had wrapped up St. Nicholas Day festivities, named for a somber Christian bishop from Asia Minor who supposedly went around throwing gold down the chimneys of the poor. It's a holiday that my oldest son's school celebrates. (Just what I need, another holiday in December!) Exhausted from a long day, about 11 p.m. Monday (St. Nicholas Day Eve) I remembered that the school newsletter had alerted parents that St. Nicholas leaves goodies in children's shoes.
I mentioned that fact to my husband, who was equally exhausted, but willing to bound downstairs in search of two muddy pairs of Nikes and the makings for a happy St. Nicholas' Day for two little boys.
He's the same guy I depend on to help make Christmas special. Though he works even more hours than I do, he manages to round up the tree and trimmings, helps with the shopping and the wrapping of presents and assorted other tasks that keep December 25 from seeming like just another day.
Without this team approach to Christmas, we might end up eating Christmas dinner at the local Holiday Inn and finding unwrapped packages under the tree.
Since the dawn of the modern women's movement, much attention has been paid to the plight of the working mother. During the 1980s, it was common to see women's magazines trumpet the superwoman; that female dynamo who worked a full-time job, cared for the children and maintained a home. Little attention was paid to the many men who helped such women meet their obligations. Of course, there are men who just "help out" by carrying out the garbage and still see household chores and child care as women's work.
But, in the 1990s, there is more sharing of the load among married couples. Certainly I see many couples who share responsibilities to a degree unimagined by many as little as a decade ago. So this is in praise of the supermen out there who take that Old Testament term "help mate" literally.
Marilyn McCraven edits The Evening Sun's Other Voices page.