My Backseat Drivers

Rori was barely two years old when she started building forts under the conference table at my office.

That's not a metaphor. That's just what a workday looked like for a while. Racks of tuxedos taller than she was, the hum of a warehouse that exists to make other people's biggest days happen, and a toddler turning the whole place into her personal construction zone.

Later it was John Deere. Tractors, sales floors, and a Parts Manager who let her "help" with whatever job she'd assigned herself that day. I was building something back then. I didn't always know exactly what, but I knew it was mine to build. Apparently it came standard with a co-pilot.

Fast forward more years than I always feel ready to admit to, and the cast has grown but the choreography hasn't changed much.

This week alone... golf lessons and a dentist appointment squeezed in, a print proof pickup on the way to daycare drop-off, and Donovan in the backseat flipping through PowerShift, the actual magazine my job produces, fully impressed. He decided years ago that Deci, our GridX mascot, is the coolest thing on the planet. He's already informed me he'll be designing the next version himself. He thought it was hilarious that Deci was doing yoga poses and that I helped create that. And he liked, more than I expected, seeing my picture in a little bubble in actual print.

Moments like that turn the abstract thing Mom does on a laptop into something real and theirs to hold.

Later that same day, our schedule fell apart the way they do sometimes. Chris wasn't feeling well, the kids came home thirty minutes early, and the evening turned into bacon and eggs in a blue plastic frying pan right alongside me finishing up a few work things.

My office doubles as a toy room. This wasn't some special accommodation. It was just Monday.

They weren't doing their own thing next to me. They were playing with me, roping me into their world, while I answered emails between rounds of pretend breakfast service.

I used to think I had to choose. Be present for them, or build the career.

I don't think that anymore.

What I've actually been doing this whole time, from warehouse forts to tractor rides to a kid obsessed with a company mascot, is showing them what it looks like to do both at the same time. In the same room. Organized chaos, but completely intact.

I am not less theirs because I have a job I care about. If anything the job has only ever made sense to me as something I was doing for them. So they'd have what they need. So they'd see what building something actually looks like. So they'd know that loving people and doing meaningful work were never supposed to be two separate rooms.

It's not always pretty. There is, in fact, a literal toy restaurant happening next to my desk right now.

But here's what matters. They were never on the outside of my career watching me disappear and wondering where Mom went. They were in it. Little co-conspirators in conference rooms. Brainstorm partners before they could spell half the words we were using. Kids who got to watch up close what it looks like when someone works hard at being a mom and works hard at building something, at the exact same time.

Not instead of. Not despite. Both. Always both.

They didn't just come along for the ride.

They helped drive it.