One Day I Will Wake Up and It Will All Fit Together (after I use a jigsaw to recut the peices).

Royal Pavilion In Brighton

We all dream of that magic moment when life suddenly comes together and we get the thing we've always needed - even if we didn't know that was what we wanted. The overnight success story is part of the American Dream. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, though. If you pull the curtain back, you'll find out the "overnight success" was years and lots of hard work in the making. I'm not a big believe on waiting for things to happen. In fact, I hate waiting. I'd rather be doing something. As James A. Owen says in his book Drawing out the Dragons there are two kinds of people: those who things  happen to, and those who make things happen. If given a choice (and we're given a choice every day of our life), I'll make things happen. So, that's one of the many reasons I attend the World Fantasy Convention.

I knew this year's WFC would be a challenge since it was going to be in another country (England) and very few people I knew were going to be attending. Do you know what I found out?

I was worried about nothing.

Turns out I knew lots of people. People I'd met over the past few years at WFC and maintained loose contact with since. I recognized even more faces than that. One of the great things about WFC is you can go up to anyone, yes, anyone, and start a conversation. A lot of those conversations start with "Were you at" or "Didn't I meet you at WFC in _______?"

Going so far outside of my comfort zone allowed forced me to make things happen.

I saw landmarks that I'd only read about. I walked the streets of Mayfair. We saw a musical. Did you know that if you buy a video game in London it won't work on a game system bought in the United States? We found that out. A very helpful sales clerk at Hamley's allowed us to return the game despite (or maybe because of) our stupidity. I spent the day rambling around London after the boys got on the train to Heathrow, and explored Brighton. A friend, Matt, became acquainted with an antique bunny in the hotel bar (no bunnies or people were harmed in the making of this picture).

Did you know the beach at Brighton is comprised of large pebbles and not sand? Or that when the surf hits the coast it hits so hard that the spray shoots up more than five feet? Or that people surf off the Brighton coast? I didn't until I went.

When your small group of friends is otherwise occupied, and you don't want to sit alone or go up to the room and call it a day, you talk to people you don't know. You have no choice. Even if you manage to find a place to sit by yourself it isn't long before someone you know walks by or someone asks to sit with you. I met a lovely couple who live less than ten miles from my office by way of a mutual friend who lives on the other side of the United States. I talked with publishers, agents, editors, and to writers at all points in their writing careers, from superstars to people just starting out. I talked to fans and readers and  book dealers. I talked to so many people for so long that I lost my voice. And, of course, the collective group ran the hotel bar out of all its beer and mixers by Sunday night.

Okay, so swinging back to the topic - all the pieces in your life magically fitting together.

I believe that people come into our lives for particular reasons. Each person we meet, each interaction, is another piece of the puzzle that makes us who we are and life worth living. When you take a new piece out of the box, you often don't know where it goes or  how it fits with the other pieces. Heck, sometimes you can't tell if the piece represents a cloud, foam from the ocean's surf, the molding around a building or a cow. It takes work for the pieces to fall into place. Sometimes it even takes the handy application of a jigsaw to recut a piece.

If you don't go out and acquire the pieces, you'll never complete the puzzle. If you don't try to put the pieces together, you won't wake up one day and have it all fit together.

So, when one day I wake up and it all fits together that moment of serendipity will be because I spent the time to make the connections (gather the puzzle pieces) at places like WFC.

The Ageless Debate: Work or Family?

Go away for two weeks and the world moves around you. There's been so much going on in those two weeks, both in my personal life and the world at large, that I had trouble deciding what to write about. After all, there is grief, governmental bullies, and a stay-at-home mom's regrets, just to name a few topics. I found I wasn't quite ready to write about a grief so fresh that the edges still cut. So, maybe it isn't a surprise that I chose a soft and long-term ache - the tension between being a mom and having a career. The "You Can Do It All" Syndrome.

In reflecting on her soon-to-be empty nest, Lisa Endlich Heffernan wrote Why I Regret Being A Stay At Home Mom  for the Huffington Post. She'd been simultaneously lauded and vilified for "coming out" and admitting that there might be some downsides to choosing the professional mother path. There are downsides to every choice.

Let me start out by saying I do think a woman can "do it all", but maybe not in the way she dreamed about.

I live the professional and mother route. I went to an exclusive all women's high school, Dana Hall, in Wellesley, Mass. While during its long history, it had helped women achieve the then "highest goal" of earning their "Mrs." degrees, but the 1980's Dana's curriculum had changed with the times to stress financial and career independence for its students. There wasn't any real question that I would go onto college and get a degree that started with a "B" as in "B.A" or "B.S.". Many of us went on to advanced degrees. I was no exception.  But I always knew I wanted a family. Hell, I was entitled to have it all.

I've been very fortunate. My husband has been an active force in our boys' lives and he's never worried about whether picking them up from the baby-sitter was "women's" work or not. So, much so that he would often drive the boys to and from while talking to clients on his cell phone. Matt is a criminal defense lawyer, and often is involved in child abuse and neglect cases (both as the child's advocate or on behalf of the City). His language is not child appropriate on those calls. How did we realize that our children were little sponges? When our then-two-year old started swearing like a sailor. At least he knew which expletives to use in which situations. We were so proud... and ashamed.

Where Ms. Hefferman laments the loss of income, professional and technical development, the endless volunteering, and the necessary narrowing of focus that comes with devoting her attention solely to her three boys, I feel guilty about the time I miss with my two boys because "mommy has a trial next week" or "court during your play" or another one of the endless deadlines my career as a lawyer and my second career as a write creates.  It's hard to explain to children that you can't be there to read their bedtime story because a client wants to take you out for dinner and drinks to celebrate a court win. When it comes down to it, there is a golden window of time when your kids only want you. Ms. Hefferman gave her boys that time. I didn't give my boys as much.

So, what have I figured out after nearly 15 years of having it all?

1. Life is a series of trade offs.  There are a few immutable facts in life. There are 24 hours in a day, and the human body needs sleep for some of them. What does spending 8, 10, 12 or more hours a day in the office mean? It means I have few hours to spend with the boys, my husband, writing,  on horseback riding, cleaning the house, spending time with friends, and just doing nothing each day. One or more of those other things I want to do are going to get shorted.

2. Kids value what you do.  Ms. Hefferman notes that her kids think she did "nothing" for all those years she made their care her primary focus. Writers and stay-at-home parents share a similar problem. What they do at work isn't about clock-punching or sitting in an office all day. It's only recently that society has recognized these careers as "work." It's easy to dismiss activities as "not work" when they revolve around sitting at a computer in your sweats, in the case of a writer, or running out for groceries as a mom.  There is an educational process involved in teaching others that "yes, I am at work' in these situations. I've had to teach my boys that I'm working when I'm writing, and they are no freer to interrupt me when I do so than they would be to walk into a client meeting and stop it.

My husband and I taught our boys that moms and dads work hard whether they go to an office, work on a computer at home, or run their households. A family is a small business. There are finances to be managed, deadlines to meet and client expectations that must be fulfilled. Part of my job is a parent is to help my boys understand that running a family is no different than any other job except that it has better perks like story hour. Teach your kids to respect and value what you do and they will never see you as having done "nothing."

3. A messy house is not a sign of a bad parent. My mom's Supermom. Her friends were Supermoms too. Yet somehow, they had houses that you could open the door and usher in photographers for Better Homes and Garden. For a long time, I had no idea how they did it (they worked part- not full-time). I'd come home after a day at the office,  put together dinner leaving my kitchen looking like a micro-tornado had struck, get the boys washed, bedtime story read and then tucked into bed, before falling into bed myself. Dishes in the sink was is the norm. I felt like a failure as a mom. But then I realized something related to #s1 and 2. I could spend hours cleaning the house to model-home standards or have a clean but messy house and invest the time in my boys. When I put it that way, the choice was simple for me.

4. Laughter matters most.  Once all the basic needs are taken care of - safety, food, shelter, education - what matters most is laughter. My husband can make me laugh when I'm miserable or furious or just generally in a bad mood. As recently as this morning, he told me to "push back the crazy." Rather than growl at him, which was my plan, I ended up laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes, Okay, so it's probably not a "normal" relationship, but it works for us

My boys don't remember all the times we went to the doctors or clothes shopping. They don't remember the 6 hours I spend making homemade pork barbeque rather than buying Lloyd's Pork Barbeque. They remember handing their father the mini-golf clubs and running back to the hotel room during a thunderstorm. They remember building the sailboat in our pool. How much we enjoy out time together matters more than how much time we have.

5. Choose deliberately, and you'll have few regrets. I think what rubbed me the wrong way about Ms. Hefferman's article is her use of "regret." To borrow a phrase from James A. Owen's Drawing out the Dragons, "Live Deliberately." I chose my chaotic existence just like Ms. Hefferman chose to stay at home with her boys.

Are there things that I wish I could have done with my boys that I didn't? Sure. Will there be more of those trade-offs in the future? Sure. Are there writing conventions I wish I'd attended but didn't? Or cases I wish I hadn't or had taken? Career missteps? Sure. See, point #1.

I'm not raising my kids to take care of me when I'm old. I'm not raising them to create my self-worth on their accomplishments. I'm raising them to have adventures with them for as long as we can.

Sometimes I have to do other precatory things (like earn money) before the things I want to do with them. Sometimes in the short-term I need to place my focus and time elsewhere. Knowing the goal means I can't regret the choices and trade-offs necessary to reach it.

Being a parent's complicated. Whether you go the stay at home route or the working parent one, there's really nothing better than laughing with your kids. None of us know how much time we have. Don't spend it on regret. Live deliberately and you can have "it" all.  You just have to decide what "it" is.