One thing at a time, please.

A caveat before you start reading this essay. I don't care if you work or stay home. I think that is one of the most personal decisions anyone can make and it's none of my business what you decide. I'm sure you've made the best decision for you and your family. This is just what I have decided and a little bit of what was behind it.

Why do we let the outside world convince that "having it all" means "having it all right now?" Over at Dotmoms, Emily wrote about how she is finding the return to work harder than she expected. "How does one have it all?" she asks. "The career, the family, the well-run household?"

The average life expectancy for American women is nearly 80 years. That's a long time. Granted, a lot longer seeming at 20 than at 60, but still, time to get a lot of things done.

Why then do we feel we have to cram everything that matters to us into one tiny slice of that life?

I'm a stay at home mom. That's a decision that I made a long time ago. Partly I do it because I honestly think it's the best thing for my children and my marriage. I have to admit though, I have a selfish motive. I do it because I think it's the best thing for me.

Do you ever go to buffet-style restaurants? I like the variety you find there. It's fun to sample lots of different dishes. I don't, however, like the pressure that I feel to overeat. There's so much there, and it all looks delicious. It's so easy to wind up with an overfull plate. I'll start off enthusiastically enough, but I almost always end up feeling bloated and unhappy with myself. I feel guilty letting food go to waste, because I took it and then couldn't eat it. (My mother calls that having eyes too big for your stomach.) I wind up forcing it all down, then wishing I'd left room for one of those yummy-looking desserts. Well, I'll tell myself, just a couple of bites won't hurt.

I didn't want my life to be like that. I didn't want to wind up having so much going on that I had no time to enjoy any of it. I wanted to concentrate on one or two experiences, wring every drop out of them, and then go on to the next.

This time at home with my children isn't going to last very long. A few years is all. At the most, if I stay home until they've both graduated from high school, 20 years. Out of a possible total of 80. Out of an adult total of 60. Less than half of my life spent on growing up and helping other people grow up, leaving me more than half to do whatever I want. Not bad.

Of course, take away the decade and a half I spent as an adult before they came along and that leaves me with ... Well, awfully darn close to retirement age before I'm back out in the work force. It's a good thing I've never seen a birthday as a reason to stop working on something I love. I fully intend to take full advantage of the quarter century remaining.

Yes, I'm fully aware the possibility is there that I'll be too sick to work when that time comes, or that I might even die long before then. That's okay. I'm fine with that. I figure that if I found out tomorrow I only had six months to live, I'd want to spend my time doing what was most important to me. That philosophy doesn't change just because I don't know exactly how much time I have left. My first priority is my family. I want to do this first. I'll fit the rest in later. Don't worry about that. I'll contrive to avoid rotting my brain in a nursing home somewhere.

Have it all? You betcha. I'm gonna have it all. Just not all today.