Multi-tasking, anyone?

I used to think I was a good multi-tasker. As a young executive, I kept many projects going at once, managing clients and staff members and a schedule that was often too packed for the pages of my Filofax. This was the pre-Blackberry age. Also pre-cell phone, if you can imagine.

I used to be able to hide out in Saks Fifth Avenue or MOMA for an afternoon if the pressure got too intense, trying on Ferragamos or cruising Picassos while clients waited for my calls. Those were the days. A pile of pink message slips greeted me on my return from playing hooky on company time. Paychecks came weekly, like the dependable tick-tock of my Swiss watch. Promotions, too, in spite of the occasional missed afternoon.

As a young mother, I took fewer afternoons off—once a week was all I allowed myself, to travel uptown on the subway to shop along Broadway. My Saks days were behind me now, and more often than not I came home with new pajamas for the kids or a new Batman t-shirt for my son. Ferragamos languished in my closet as my feet grew, one half-size for each pregnancy.

Parenting is the apex of multi-tasking. Schedules are imperative, but abandoned regularly to accommodate human needs—fevers, soccer practice, ear infections, spontaneous playdates, skinned knees, emotional melt-downs. Executive life is comparatively calm and orderly.

As the children got older, I added part-time work to the multi-mix. Still, I managed to get lunch in the lunch boxes every day and a hot dinner on the table every night, with only an occasional break for take-out. And that wasn’t enough. When the PTA needed a president, I was there. Chair a fund-raiser? Absolutely! Run for office? You bet’cha! While I never ran for mayor, I filled several Party positions over the years.

Elaborately-themed birthday parties and handcrafted Halloween costumes gave vent to some of my creative juices. With my husband, I designed and made a Tyrannosaurus Rex costume that transformed our son into another species. Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey would not do for our kids’ birthdays. We wrote plays, made treasure map scrolls with rhyming riddle clues, gave puppet shows with homemade puppets. At Christmas, I made plum puddings and decorated to the hilt, while making dress-up clothes for the children.

I don’t think I knew how much energy I was putting into all that “home-making” over the years. As our children grew (and we grew older), we gradually did less celebrating. Our energies went into more weighty pursuits, like the college search.

Polishing my executive skills, I prepared a loose-leaf notebook for each child, documenting their achievements and honors, their creative pursuits and academic excellence. As they were taking the SATs, I was honing my skills on the FAFSA—the Federal Student Aid Application designed to discourage anyone without a PhD in Bureaucracy from applying for financial aid for college.

During those years, I learned to carve out some time for my own creative work. But projects were often deferred to the needs of the family. When I did make time for myself, dinner didn’t get made and the laundry piled up. I didn’t even think of myself as a multi-tasker anymore.

This year, our youngest went off to college. Before her first semester was over, I had designed and produced a prototype book of my photography, and written and submitted my first grant application, complete with manuscript, for my poetry. I ate raw carrots and snap-peas for dinner and used every piece of clean clothing I had before doing a load of laundry.

Maybe I never was multi-tasking after all, I thought. Maybe all those years I was always focused on just one thing at a time—first job, then family, now me.