I’m Having a Moment

When my daughter was born nine and a half years ago, I made the decision to leave the television business and stay home with my kids.

It was the right decision for me, and I never once missed having a job that required me to go in to work each day. I spent the early years with both my children hosting play dates, visiting the zoo, hiking in the woods, reading picture books, making crafts, snuggling, singing, laughing, and just trying to soak up every moment of being my kids’ mom. Now that they’re both in school, I feel just as passionate about being around when they get home, having lunch with them at school, attending their class parties and events, and just generally making them feel secure about the fact that I’m here for them, every single day. We’ve made significant financial sacrifices over the years so that I could do this and the even now the situation is far from perfect (my freelance work bleeds over into family time far more than I’d like), but overall, we’re making it work.

In 2012, things temporarily changed when I got two once-in-a-lifetime opportunities– one to cover the Presidential election, another to host my own Internet series. That meant that I was on the road a LOT. At the end of the year, my husband and I tallied up the travel time and realized that I was gone for a total of three months. THREE MONTHS! Pretty insane, right?

Looking back, though, that year was good for our family– The kids developed a much closer, more trusting relationship with their father, they seemed to appreciate my presence much more than they had before, and I got a chance to realize some career dreams and to become absolutely certain that I hadn’t missed out on anything by “leaning out” and putting my kids before my former TV news career.

I also learned something very important about myself– While I really love doing television and video work,  I really hate traveling without my family. I’m not judging anyone here- I know quite a few moms who do it often and do it well– I have just personally come to loathe the empty hotel rooms at the end of the day, and the Face Time conversations that leave me feeling sad and guilty when they’re over, and the constant gnawing feeling in my stomach as I wonder if the babysitter picked them up on time and if Punky remembered to study for her long division test, and if Bruiser got to the birthday party okay, and all of the other things I generally handle on a daily basis.

I had become resigned, though, to the fact that in my line of work, solo travel was going to be a periodic part of my life. TV pays well, after all, and a one-week project can mean several months of financial security for my family. And then last year, the opportunity came along for me to help develop and host a reality travel show — one that we decided would include my husband and kids on each vacation. It sounded perfect, but even as I attended meetings for it and dreamed and schemed and helped create a blueprint for the series, a big part of me knew it would probably never actually happen. I mean, that’s just how television is.

Yet now… It’s happening.

PBS is actually airing our travel show this summer, and last week, my family and I shot our first episode on the road.

I was horribly nervous about how the kids would handle our first ‘working vacation’ together– Sure there were fun experiences planned for them, but there was also plenty of not-so-fun, behind-the-scenes television stuff that I wasn’t certain six and nine year olds would be able to handle for four days straight.

 It’s safe to say that they exceeded my expectations.

I couldn’t have been prouder of my kids- They were excited about the places we visited, engaged and interested in both the travel experience and the television production aspect of the show, and easily entertained during the inevitable downtime.

They got to pet alligators, watch manatees in the wild, taste amazing desserts and ethnic foods, feed swans, see swamps and natural springs, learn magic tricks and experience Florida in a truly unique and memorable way. And that’s really, really wonderful- But that’s not why I’m writing about the trip.

I’m writing about it because getting to do what I love and having my family there with me was truly one of the greatest moments of my entire life. I can’t express how  fulfilling it was to get to a hotel room at the end of each day that was strewn with my children’s clothing and toys, or how much I enjoyed playing 150 games of Rock, Paper Scissors with my daughter and making fart jokes with my son in the crew van on the way to a shoot, as opposed to staring out the window and wondering what they were doing back at home. I never dreamed that I’d see my husband and kids happily spending time together out of the corner of my eye as I did an on-camera interview or standup.

I can’t know what the future holds– All I know is that I never, ever want to forget the pure magic of now, the first time in a long time when I haven’t felt an endless, inner tug-of-war between career and kids– the time when everything I love has converged. This morning, my heart is full. And in between blog posts about the chaos and and dark humor of my mostly-very-ordinary suburban life, I hope you’ll allow these feelings to have a space occasionally, too.