Second best

Oh, what a week, including one daughter home from school yesterday, a second one home today. What I think they need most of all is sleep. School, away games, late-night practices, and even later-night homework, and it's not yet October. And, in our case, it's not yet high school. But it reminded me of a New York Times interview with Debora Spar, president of Barnard College and author of a new book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, which came out this week.

In the interview, Spar says Barnard women are "coming out of high school exhausted," after years of fighting for perfect SAT scores, working to get into AP classes, and trying to balance all those many, many sports and extracurriculars. In her book, Spar advocates "satisficing," or settling for second best. "Sometimes second best is really good," Spar says, "and second best is much better than fourth best or worse."

She gives an example of coming home from work, saying a quick hello to her 8-year-old, and rushing back out the door. "Where are you going?," her son asked. To a PTA meeting at your school, she said. "Why?," he asked. Because I want to be involved in your school community, she told him. "But I want you here," he said. And after that, she never attended another PTA meeting.

During late-night homework sessions this week, I finished The Art of Fielding, a book I resisted for too long, thinking I had enough baseball in my real life. And if I'm completely honest, I also resisted because I tend to prefer books written by women. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this - it's ridiculous - but it's true. After reading this book, I hope I've learned a lesson. This is a story about baseball, yes, but also about relationships, home, fear, failure, and love. It paints such a true picture of college life and the friendships formed there, particularly male friendships:

"Schwartz held out his fist and Henry bumped it with his own, and Pella could tell from their somber, ceremonious expressions that their feud, or whatever you'd call it, had ended. Men were such odd creatures. They didn't duel anymore, even fistfights had come to seem barbaric, the old casual violence all channeled through institutions now, but still they loved to uphold their ancient codes. And what they loved even more was to forgive each other. Pella felt like she knew a lot about men, but she couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of them, to be in a room of them with no woman present, to participate in their silent rites of contrition and redemption."

Lean In

I haven't yet read Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, so it's a little funny that I'd be writing a post about it. In my defense, I'm really writing about Real Simple managing editor Kristin van Ogtrop's response to Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, and Sandberg's hugely successful and widely discussed new book.

Once, long ago, I read something van Ogtrop wrote in an anthology on motherhood. It was before I had children, but her essay struck me as the most honest and daring of the collection. Ever since then, I've looked forward to reading her monthly "editor's note" in Real Simple. She's funny and smart and, just as she was in that first essay, always honest.

In her most recent "editor's note" (an expanded version was published in The Huffington Post), van Ogtrop says, "Here's the thing: I don't want to be striving for bigger/better/higher/more every minute of every day. I don't always want to have a larger goal. That just sounds exhausting and, worst of all, completely joyless."

Obviously, as editor of a successful lifestyle magazine, van Ogtrop has achieved the kind of success I think Sandberg's talking about (but remember, I haven't read the book!). And she makes a point of saying how much she loves her job. But to me, that makes her argument more compelling, not less. This is the part that moved me most: "... I can tell you with certainty that, when I'm lying on my deathbed, I'm not going to be thinking about career wins. I'm going to be thinking about my parents and two sisters who greeted every new life situation like it was another chapter in a long, hilarious narrative; my steadfast husband, who gave me love and a true north; and finally, the three children who made me take life both more and less seriously, and whose faces are the only thing I see when I close my eyes."

The second best part of van Ogtrop's essay is the last few sentences. I've given away too much already, so I'll let you read it for yourself. I'd love to hear what you think.

(The photo above - of the mantle in my living room - was taken by my good friend and fabulous photographer Jennifer Green.)

Ride

I don't spend much time on my bike beyond riding on nearby paths to run the dog, so maybe that's why I was so interested in a New York Times article about people commuting from far-flung suburbs into the city. It's the hour - some at 4:45 a.m. - they leave; it's the conditions - dark, ice - they ride in; and it's the distances - 40 or so miles one way - that got me. I pride myself on getting out of bed at 7:00 each morning and walking my youngest daughter to school a quarter of a mile in 40 degree weather. Ha! What about the group that leaves from Ridgewood, NJ, at 5:30, with a shift at 6:30 "for the lazy people"? And the commuter who starts off alone in Chappaqua, NY, and is met in Hawthorne by a family of coyotes that trots alongside his bike? No complaining tomorrow morning or ever again when my alarm goes off.

Photo by Mikael Colville-Andersen via Flickr