The Next Right Thing
When my daughter Anna was three, she pierced my heart by gazing wistfully out the car window after daycare pickup and saying, "I wish Cody's mommy was my mommy."
Cody's mother had spent the afternoon making origami pumpkins with the kids. I had spent the afternoon at work.
I held it together for the drive home, then gave a faraway friend a tearful recounting of what had happened. “Oh Kate,” she said, “Cody’s mommy is a whore.”
Dear reader, Cody’s mommy is not a whore; my friend just knows how to make me laugh. Years later, I got to know Cody’s mother, and the only reason she is not yet my friend is that she was, until quite recently, my doctor.
Fourteen years later, I see this episode for what it was: not a reflection on either of us as mothers, but a function of a decade-long phase when I pretty much always felt I should be somewhere other than where I was:
Home making dinner? That’s not how you turn around an ailing company!
At the office, developing a new business pitch? That’s not how a Thanksgiving feast comes together.
At the hospital, because there’s not much time left now? Your mom was a devoted teacher. She’d want you to be home helping your kid pass math.
To be clear: no one said these things to me. These were just the voices in my head—but they were loud.
In the end, I did what everyone does: muddle through, say sorry a lot. If you’re lucky enough to have a good job and too many people to love them all properly, you just do the best you can. You keep picking the next right thing, and you hope to hell that, over time anyway, you got it vaguely right.
Back to now. I thought this phase of my life, with my company in more talented hands than mine, would be different. I imagined that, moment to moment, I’d feel less torn. In fact, I fantasized that I’d often feel I was exactly where I needed to be, doing what I needed to do.
But then Trump returned to office, consolidated power, cut environmental and civil rights protections, ended humanitarian aid, kneecapped science, broke the trust of our allies, injected a completely unnecessary level of uncertainty into the business environment, installed a kleptocracy…and started disappearing people from the street. Even before Trump put ICE’s budget on a path to $170 billion—a gobsmacking increase—I could hardly focus on anything besides the democratic backsliding happening before our very eyes. Now that I see, “Oh, he’s building an actual police state,” I’m officially a) freaked and b) no longer questioning whether I’m overreacting.
Weirdly, though, it seems that the answer is still the same: to muddle through, to balance all the competing demands of the day, to find the next right thing.
For me, the next political thing I’ll do is next week: Thursday, July 17th marks five years since the death of John Lewis. Good Trouble Lives On is a day of nationwide, collective action that will be a chance to demonstrate not just against the Trump administration but for the things Lewis fought so hard to secure: justice, voting rights, dignity for all.
If you decide to join the day’s events in some way, let me know? It’s always heartening to hear from other amateurs trying to do their bit.
For now, thanks for reading,
Kate
Notes:
- Regarding Anna’s grammar: no, I did not correct her. Can you imagine? “Sweetie, it’s the subjunctive. I wish Cody’s mommy were my mommy.”
- I know Thursday, July 17th is a workday for many of us. Happily, Good Trouble Lives On has more than daytime marches on offer. There are virtual events in the evening, food drives you can pop into, and more. To see what’s happening in your community, go to the site, scroll down to the map, and enter your zip code.
