Triage

A Fench term used in battlefield medicine and emergency rooms, “Triage,” means “to sort.” The practice is simple. Take the most serious cases first – those likely to die without immediate care, the less serious cases after, and then those that can wait until after all the other bleeding is done. There are those, however, that you just have to admit aren’t going to make it and need to be quietly put aside to meet their maker while three others are saved with the surgeon’s time. Busy people all know this: they sort and resort, triage through their day. And Moms are busy people.

Even those who write about how busy moms are getting tired of being so busy at it all the time. I recently read an article in a magazine (can’t remember which one) where a critic was writing about being sick of blogs, articles, books and newspaper articles on motherhood, babyhood, parenting, working moms, part-time working moms and all the vagaries, challenges, bitches and ecstatic joys of all those spaces. I suspect she’s got her bases covered and her balls momentarily all in the air and would really like to just spend some time with her kids without thinking too much about it.

I can totally relate, as my students would say. I’m sure that Madame X is tired of the media onslaught and I have to admit to throwing Parent and Child against the wall because they want to insist that I think about “10 Things To Do With a Toddler” or “Bringing Back Dinner Time.”

Who eats dinner?

I’m catching cold bologna sandwiches while spoon-feeding (and wearing) that gack that passes for baby food into Connor, at the same time doing the mental calculations of how many student papers I’ve read and how many I have left to go before I’m free to collapse in bed with a book. If I have an hour and a half to cook, serve, sit at while wrassling the baby like a greased pig, and clean up after dinner, I’m damn sure going to work on my manuscript or play on the floor with my baby boy. It’s easier, more fun and actually gets something valuable accomplished. Life these days is about getting organized, using time wisely and taking no prisoners when it comes to things, people and projects that aren’t good time investments. Some would say that I’m getting lazy about the housekeeping, some would say I’m getting smart if I want to use that time to write, talk or play with the baby instead. We all have to cut our deals and dance with our devils.

I easily devolve into spitting fury these days, however, at those stupid enough to suggest that the problems of working mothers can be solved with a day planner and a bowl for your keys.

Before school started, I cleared the decks of my closets, bathroom, desks and in-box so that things would roll smoothly. No extraneous and useless pieces of clothing, extra jars, hairpins, etc. would clutter my smooth and facile way to getting ready in the morning, getting out the door and getting to the desk in the afternoon. Things must and would work with only the necessary pieces of equipment – no reaching through the slogs of useless things to get to the essential. No cluttering of the house, no up-and-downstairs with cleaning equipment; each level had what it would need to stay clean.

It is to laugh.

Well, after several weeks, I can tell you that it’s probably working better than if I hadn’t done all that, but I’ve let go many of my Rage for Order projects that seemed to be more about Rage and less about Order. I’m beginning to treat every day, closet and workspace as if I’m going on vacation tomorrow, don’t have time or inclination to deal with extra minutia, and would really play with my baby than have to dig through extraneous bits to find the right bra-underpants-tights-shoes combo to go with a dress or turn 5 dollars worth of ingredients into a vat of food that no-one will want to eat anyway. To hell with it, it’s all black and the summer wardrobe be damned. Ironing has gone the way of the large cooking projects on Sunday. In fact, one of the blouses I bought second-hand while I was in between sizes needed ironing and I managed to shrink out if it before I got an iron to it to wear it. So be it. Moving right along.

Yes, restructuring both our national health and child care systems would take an egregious weight off working moms – probably work out to an extra 5 hours a week one way or the other that they could feed back into their days, and hundreds if not thousands that families could feed back into their budgets for groceries, babysitters, and ironing. All working women know that money buys time – food that is cooked for you, housekeeping, babysitting, car washing. The broke do all their own cooking and cleaning. A few extra dollars and there’s money for take-out now and then and some dry-cleaning.

Because of these kitchen-level economic realities, I’ll be watching our presidential candidates very closely and voting for family-friendly policy making. Til that happens though, I’m going to keep throwing things away that don’t work: plans, clothes, projects, arguments, recipes and housekeeping expectations. I learned this morning, in about a half hour, that there’s little you can’t do with a Swiffer pad and a damp sponge and the rest isn’t that important anyway.