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a hamster on a wheel. No time to drink the coffee I had set up to be made in the morning. We needed to maintain this schedule to get us out of the door on time. Peter would tag team in occasionally like when Jacob threw his spoon of cereal against the wall. The stain would be cleaned up later, probably tonight at 1 am. Emily bumped her head on the coffee table, and Peter grabbed her so I could shower with the curtain open, and Jacob on the floor gnawed on puzzle pieces instead of trying to fit them together. I thought about wearing something nice, my red silk shirt that I always got complimented on, but Jacob had puked on that one morning right before work and I still hadn’t picked it up from the dry cleaner.
    At last, I made it out of the house. First phase complete. There was no last-minute puke incident. That was a gift I for which I was grateful. But other than that there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was if today were any other day. Except it was Tuesday and Peter was doing drop off because he had a late meeting on Tuesdays. I waited when he kissed me good-bye, the quick chaste kiss we gave each other now. We kiss with the kiss that you might give a stinky grandmother.
    On the subway I read through my emails as usual. Today couldn’t be any different. When the train went above-ground over the Manhattan Bridge, I had the signal to check my PDF and cell phone to see if there were any updates. Then I glanced for a minute at the view of the river.
    It was in these moments every morning that I wondered if all of this was worth it. I thought of our exorbitant mortgage, working way too hard, and I fretted so much about the dangers that lay ahead for our kids in a city.
    Sometimes the park seemed less like a small world and more like a minefield where pedophiles lurked, and kids fell off bikes or thugs mugged moms with strollers. I hadn’t heard of anything like that happening, of course, but it lay in the back of my head constantly.
    I had no time to wonder or worry when I got to my desk and confronted another mountain of emails. I half expected to find a bouquet of flowers from Peter waiting for me, but it wasn’t there.
    I hadn’t really had time to call the preschool consultant. It was personal business and I tried to never do personal business in the office. There was enough actual business that needed to be completed.
    I am the vice president of production accounting. I love my title. I am pleased to say that earned it. I work for a production company that produces numerous soap operas. Lately one of the biggest ones is Dragon Circle about a street where a bunch of teenage vampires live. It’s all the rage with teens, especially the Goth ones. We have plenty of traditional soaps, too. They are still making money. But I have nothing to do with the on-camera stuff or anything creative. I run the team that balances the needs of the creative staff—who constantly want helicopter shoots on deserted Indian islands—with the bottom line of the parent company. There is a lot of numbers crunching and teleconferencing. But I don’t really do that stuff anymore. At my level I basically attend a lot of meetings, make a lot of decisions and delegate a lot of responsibility. I don’t love the delegating, but sometimes you have to let the underlings feel important.
    All that and a corner office. I didn’t need Harvard for that.
    It is only the business office in New York. All the shows are shot in LA, and our parent company is in London. Why that matters is because at any given time someone is awake to send me email or expect something from me. I have to leave the office at 5:15 every day to get the twins at day care. Once they were settled into bed, I was back online and working.
    I was working harder now than ever before. I didn’t want anyone to ever accuse me of slacking because of my kids. I knew how people talked about women when they had kids, how they changed their expectations of them. I had to prove them