There’s a scene in the movie, “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” that every woman on earth can probably relate to.
Sarah Jessica Parker – as hardworking, multitasking mom, Kate – arrives home late from a business trip to find out that her child is expected to bring goodies in for her school bake sale… the very next day. Panicked, Kate decides to make a pie and rushes to the grocery store around the corner, but they don’t have the ingredients. So she does the next best thing – she buys a ready-made pie and puts it in her own pie dish. She’ll pass it off as homemade.
Except that the store-bought pie is too small and the pan is too large. Not to be defeated, Kate takes a rolling pin and smooshes the pie down until it does fit. Then she throws a handful of confectioner’s sugar on top. Done!
Men – like Kate’s husband – don’t understand why we women do these things. Why not, they ask reasonably, send in a store-bought cake or a package of cookies, and be done with it? But as women, we’re always going that extra mile for others. We cheerfully (well, most of the time) help out our kids, our husbands, our friends and neighbors, and our bosses.
‘You need me to stay late and finish the Baxter report, sir? No problem!’
‘You need a chocolate cake for twenty-seven kids for the school bake sale, sweetie? No problem! It has to be gluten free? No problem! Wait – the bake sale is when? Tomorrow? Erm, problem…’
We’re so busy doing for others, frantically being the accommodating wife/mom/friend/whatever, that we sometimes end up exhausted, popping Xanax like Tic Tacs and brewing more cups of coffee in one day than a Starbucks barista.
So why do we do it? It is because we don’t want to disappoint anyone, or let someone down? Do we need the approval? Or are we just plain crazy?
I mean, let’s face it. No matter how much we complain, deep down, we like being the go-to girl at work. We like being the one who can change the toner cartridge in the printer and create a killer PowerPoint presentation for the sales meeting, while simultaneously finding a replacement babysitter (ours just cancelled) for the Friday night date with our husband.
We’re proud to be the mom who can whip up a batch of homemade cupcakes at 11:30 at night, after a full day at work. After all, what family woman nowadays doesn’t work? Yet she still manages to keep her family in clean clothes, puts a roast chicken on the table for dinner that could rival Julia Child’s best, and somehow keeps it all together. We women are all a bit like Ginger Rogers – as she once famously said, she did everything Fred Astaire did… only in heels, and backwards. (And she looked fabulous doing it.)
But while being multitaskers and doing for others is all well and good, there is a limit. Helping others is thoughtful, and kind, and makes us indispensable. And those things are probably even appreciated, most of the time. Still… sometimes, we need to be selfish. We need to say ‘no.’ We need to carve out a space for ourselves in our busy lives, if only to read a few pages of that new novel we just bought, or watch the latest episode of “Law and Order,” or just… be.
Because we won’t be worth anything to anyone if we burn ourselves out on a never-ending quest to be The Perfect Wife/Mother/Friend/Whatever. So maybe we should settle for “good enough.” That doesn’t mean we’ve lowered our standards; it just means we’ve stopped trying to be perfect all the time, on every level. After all, a store-bought cake (or a cake mix!) really is good enough for the school bake sale if we’re too pressed for time to make it from scratch. The world won’t end.
The sun will still rise… and my husband still won’t be able to find his socks.
Oh, well. It’s good to be needed, isn’t it?
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