When I was nine years old, I liked to come home from school, turn on the television and watch The People?s Court. For 30 minutes, everyday citizens would come before a black-gowned, white-haired man named Judge Wapner and argue their cases?usually unneighbourly disagreements.
Wapner would collect all of his information and then deliver his decision in long, convincing paragraphs that made you think he was going to side one way. Then, at the very last minute, he?d turn the whole thing around with swift logic and rule in favour of the other guy. Boom. Slam of the gavel. ?Guilty!? I called it every time.
So maybe I should have been more prepared 20-something years later when, going back to work after the birth of our first son, that guilty gavel dropped from the sky, seemingly out of nowhere. Like most American women, I was back at work sooner than I wanted to be, at 12 weeks. Still, I?d bought some new pants, hired a nanny, brushed my hair and stepped onto the New York City subway, ready to go do something I knew I was good at: my job. I hated handing my ten-pound son to a woman I barely knew. But I did not, I told myself?and my well-intended neighbour, who?d inquired in the elevator?feel any guilt for supporting my family and returning to a career that I?d built for years.
What I felt was: unhealed, anxious, tender-nippled, stressed, sweaty, free, exuberant, old, young, hurried, exhausted, ugly, capable, incompetent, leaky, appreciated, alien, unmoored, excited, relieved. I ...