Settling Down

When my mother discovered that Andy and I were getting married, the first words out of her mouth were, “Good, maybe now you’ll settle down.”

Settle down? I thought. Like throw out my mountain bike, backpack, and passport in exchange for an apron and flowery house dress? She seemed to think that I rode my bike every day to impress someone, that I traveled because I was looking for something, or that I only scrambled up steep couloirs because I was chasing some boy. OK, maybe a little. But I genuinely love being outdoors -- skiing, hiking, cycling, even just walking. I spent my 20s and early-30s bicycle racing in the West, climbing almost every 14,000-foot peak in Colorado, slogging up the snowfields and glaciers of Mt. Rainier in Washington State and Mt. Elbrus, Europe’s highest peak. I skied every winter weekend and not on the bunny slope. Giving all this up and “settling down” would be as difficult as cutting off a limb.

But this is what my mother had done in the 1950s when she finally met my father. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1946 and spent the following decade teaching elementary school. On weekends, she skied, hiked, and rode her bike, among other pursuits no doubt considered too vigorous for her gender. One summer, she traveled to Europe alone, studying in Oslo, Norway, and traveling the continent. On one expedition that summer, she hitchhiked on a freighter from Italy back to Norway.

She rarely tells us stories from this decade, as if this time of her life happened to someone else. Her mission, she said, was to find a husband, and after 10 years, it must have felt a bit desperate. Most of her contemporaries had met their mates in college. My mother had missed the boat and was adrift at sea, not really enjoying the voyage and doing everything she could to find a friendly port in which to anchor. The word "spinster" was probably uttered by mean-spirited relatives.

When she met my father in 1956, her wanderlust faded. She had found her port. They married in 1959, and my sister was born two years later. I followed two years after that. She shelved her blackboard chalk and threw herself into mothering. As far as I can tell, she was never happy again.

My sister and I were lucky to be born into the generation that believed it could do whatever it wanted. Although I always assumed I'd have children -- two girls two years apart like me and my sister -- I didn't particularly want to be a mother. Mothers did boring things like cook vegetables, hang laundry in the dark basement, darn socks, and nag. 

Fathers, on the other hand, left the house every day, had offices with windows overlooking the world, sometimes traveled, and made money. They talked to interesting people, told dirty jokes, and laughed. They were happy. I wanted to be like my father, without much consideration for who would actually cook vegetables, wash clothes, and do the mending for those two girls I would be having. My sister and I both attended the same prep school as my father, then went to his alma mater for college. Our classmates talked of law school, med school, and jobs in New York. No one ever talked of having children.

When Andy and I married in 1998, nothing changed in my life. I raced my bicycle up New Hampshire's Mt. Washington, I rafted Class V rapids in West Virginia, and I backcountry skied at night in a foot of fresh snow. We bicycled around Mallorca, skied in Zermatt, and mountain biked in Moab, Utah. No way would I settle down.

Now that we've had a child though -- a girl, but only one -- I wonder if my mother's unquestioning acceptance of her role wasn't easier than balking against its demands. I constantly juggle too many balls, and one invariably hits the floor with a thud.

But is it better to pick up a dropped ball than tediously tossing only one ball in the air over and over, year after year until I forget that I actually am capable of more?

I have settled down to a degree. My bike rides rarely leave the county, and when we ski, we stick to the easy trails, trailing behind our daughter. We still travel, but we stay in places with swimming pools and eat in restaurants that sell more kid food than cocktails. Although I neither work full-time nor wear the Mommy hat 24/7, I have to keep a few balls in the air, even if I no longer toss them as high. It's the only way I know who I am.