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In less than a week I will no longer be the mother of teenagers. A major life phase will be over. Don’t worry – I know full well that I’ll still be doing plenty of parenting for many years to come. I’m sure my own mother would report that she still actively parents. But at least symbolically, it feels like the end of something and the start of a something new.

These kinds of transitional moments are always opportunities for looking back, and as it happens, a recent encounter provided a further push down reflection road.  I recently had the privilege of speaking to a group of rabbinic students. In the course of my presentation, ostensibly about my career path and wisdom gleaned along the way (what a funny thought!), a student asked a question that admittedly caught me off guard, and I’ve been thinking about it since then. It was a totally fair question – no criticism is implied other than self-criticism about how I fumbled an answer.

The question was (in my words, not the student’s): It seems that at first you leaned out, and then you leaned in. And then I was asked to address that.

So here goes.

When I was first making choices about my career, Lean In had not yet been written. There was no such expression then. But we did talk back then about the “mommy track” and I spent a lot of time in my last year of rabbinic school stressing about the idea that in making a choice based on my children’s needs, I was somehow making a choice that was “less than.” I remember actually (and to my great embarrassment) crying to my rabbinic mentor, and also to my work supervisor, because I couldnt figure out how I was going to make it all work.  Choosing to not go into congregational work felt like being all dressed up and nowhere to go – like I was somehow wasting my education and letting down the system.

The thing is, I had children before I had a career. I entered rabbinic school (placing out of the first year in Jerusalem and starting as a second year state-side)  with a one year old, and became pregnant with my second child in my second semester. So all of my career decisions have centered around the basic fact of being a parent.

When my classmates in rabbinic school were heading out at the end of the school day to internships, I was heading to the babysitter to pick up my kids. My summers in school weren’t spent doing valuable residency internships or CPE training – I was taking care of toddlers who were too young for day camp.

I have always been a working mother; I was a temple educator when my first baby was born.  My first separation from her happened when I went in to work during maternity leave to run teacher orientation – she was ten days old.  It was a tough balancing act from the start.

I chose non-congregational work when I was ordained because my children were, at that time, very young. I didn’t want a job that would keep me away from them on weekends and evenings, and where every phone call could be a possible funeral or congregational crisis. But I never chose to not work.

I never chose to not work partly because I always wanted to work – I wanted to contribute to the world and I wanted to use my skills and education in interesting and stimulating ways. Yes, I know that a lot of stay-at-home moms feel that they do that by raising their children. But I knew that that would not be true for me. Moreover, I wanted to share the responsibility of supporting my family financially. I did not want to be financially dependent on a man. And honestly, I couldn’t afford not to work. When I was ordained, my husband was just starting graduate school himself. There was actually no way I couldn’t work.

Yes, I was often jealous of the stay-at-home moms who could socialize with each other during afternoon playdates. I worried that I didn’t go to enough mommy-and-me classes with my children, and that I wasn’t around to go to the park. But I found the best balance I could – working two days a week at home for the first few years, being willing to work often crazy hours and take on an increasingly taxing travel schedule at times so that I could be present for school plays and teacher meetings and basketball games at other times.

Early on, I formulated a personal give-and-take policy about work, not one for which I sought approval, but one that helped me make it all work. As the job that I initially took because I thought it would provide a good work-life balance began to expand and become huge and insatiably demanding, I made a decision that I would give it my all, but that I would also take what I needed. That is, if I was required to be away for travel and when home, to get back on the computer at night once my kids were in bed, that was ok, but when I had a sick child at home or needed to be present for a visit to the orthodontist or a class presentation, I would not apologize for taking the time I needed for my children. Once they were old enough, I also occasionally took them with me to conferences – if I was required to be away from my family over a weekend, or over a school break, which was often the case, then they could come. They got to ride a mechanical bull at a CCAR conference in Houston during a spring break, they got to throw themselves against a velcro wall at a NATE conference in Kansas City during a winter break, and they helped set up book displays at countless CAJE conferences during summer breaks.

Which is all to say that I don’t think I ever “leaned out.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that choice, but I don’t think that’s a helpful or accurate way to describe the reality of balancing parenting and career. What I did do, in those early years, was find a way to just simply stand up and not collapse. That is, my need and desire to work were in conflict with my need and desire to be a good parent. I found the best imperfect solution possible, one that allowed the insanity of being a working parent to whirl forward.

There was no one magical moment where I suddenly switched from “leaning out” to “leaning in.” My job grew and grew, and then I eventually took a different job that continues to grow, and I continue to love what I do and feel challenged and fulfilled by it. And at the same time, my children grew and grew and their needs and schedules continued to change. Of course there were challenges along the way. Of course there were moments of guilt, and worry. Of course there were moments of realizing the balance was way off, and then recalibrating. Of course there were compromises, some satisfying and some utterly not so, and attendant feelings of frustration or inadequacy. It was never a perfect balance, but it worked. All the various pieces in the constellation of my life somehow held up.

Along the way, the landscape shifted. A year ago my youngest left for college, and this past May my oldest graduated from college and is now herself a member of the work force. So this feels like a moment to both look back and look ahead. From the start of my career, I jumped in with both feet. I was fully committed to my job and its overall mission, even as I was committed to my children. It was never a matter of leaning in or leaning out. Making a career choice based on being a parent is not about leaning out, it’s about finding a workable solution. It doesn’t mean not being fully committed to one’s job, or not being ambitious or driven, it just means that you’re trying to find a healthy balance.

So as someone who is transitioning out of the “working mother” phase, I suggest that we talk about the real underlying issues about women and work, like childcare, equal opportunities, and equal pay. The false polarity between “leaning out” and “leaning in” is one more way that our society expresses its ambivalence about working mothers. It’s one more way that we judge each other. It’s one more way that we hold women to a different standard than men. I just did what I had to do to make it all keep spinning.

Fall is here, and the Tishrei holidays are (almost) over.  That means that it’s time to get back to reading for pure pleasure.  Here is a round-up of some of the best books of the last months.  Even though I clearly liked some better than other, they’re a varied bunch, and all worthwhile reads.

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey.  A heartbreakingly beautiful and unusual novel. This story, set in 1920’s Alaska and based in part on a Russian legend, is a fairy tale for grownups.  The writing is as spare and evocative as the landscape it describes.  Read it for the story.  Read it for the setting. Just read it.

The Innocents, by Francesca Segal. I was excited to read this as the concept sounded great – a take on Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence with the setting of a contemporary Jewish community in London. It was a satisfactory read but in the end I found it tepid. The characters didn’t have enough depth and the plot was too predictable. I wanted to care more than I did, and I wanted to be surprised. There was a lot of potential to explore here but the surface was merely scratched. That said, this would probably spark interesting discussions in book clubs.

Fin and Lady, by Cathleen Schine. This book got me in the gut, in a good way. I’m still not even sure why, but it got under my skin. Maybe it was the descriptions of growing up in NYC in the 60’s and 70’s, maybe it was the relationship between the two main characters, maybe it was the rich mix of depth and humor and surface beauty, maybe it was the lyrical flow that took me up and down and up and down – never sure exactly where it was going – I’m still not sure but I’m sure that I loved it. It captured my heart.

The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis. A great mystery, with enough surprises and plot twists to keep it interesting, and characters with enough dimensionality to keep me engaged.  Though there is some violence, it is much less gruesome and cruel than what might be expected from the title.  What is it with the Scandinavians and good mysteries?

TransAtlantic, by Colin McCann.  One of the best of the bunch from the last few months of reading.  This book is breathtaking, driven by a poetic narrative that twists and turns and plays with language.  Three stories from different unique historical moments in Ireland intertwine and play off each other, moments that are meaningful not only to Ireland but also in North America over multiple generations.  One of the powerful images of the book is an early plane trip from Canada to Ireland, in which the two-man plane weaves and zigzags through the clouds.  That exhilarating sense of reeling back and forth, the horizon obscured and then visible and then obscured again, not knowing what is coming up ahead but waiting for it with great anticipation is a feeling that lasts throughout the book as the interconnected stories fly through time and space.  McCann takes the daring move of using several real historical people in this novel, including one who is still alive and apparently allowed himself to be used as a character.

Is This Tomorrow, by Caroline Leavitt.  Interesting story about a mother and son who find themselves at the center of a mystery involving a missing boy.  This tragic turn of events shapes their lives in unexpected ways for years to come.  This novel has a compelling plot and interesting characters but it starts out a little flat, despite the great drama at the center, and doesn’t really overcome that.  It’s as if the author is scared of making a commitment to her own ideas.  She uses the mother’s Jewish identity as a plot device, as another way in which this divorced woman is an outsider in her own neighborhood, but then doesn’t do anything with it.  Their Judaism does not play any role in their lives, values or choices going forward, so it’s an awkward and under utilized detail that just hangs there. The story is ripe for complicated ethical dilemmas, but the author seems skittish about getting in too deep.

The Virgins, by Pamela Erens.  This one grew on me.  Set at a boarding school in 1980, this is the story of what a teenage relationship feels like to those within it, and what it looks like to those outside.  There is an intensity that builds at the book progresses, mirroring the ever-growing intensity of the relationship at its center.  But things are never what they look like, and teenagers are complicated creatures. Along with classes, sports, and applying to college, their lives are punctuated with experimentation, sexuality, drugs, pleasure, shame, and fear. As they move toward graduation, teetering on the edge of the childhood they supposedly still are situated within but in fact have left long ago, the precarious balancing act of their lives falls apart.  More than a coming of age story, this book suggests that innocence can be as dangerous as the loss thereof, and that experience is not always what it’s made out to be.

If you’re looking for some other books to read, join me in the Man Booker challenge suggested by my friend Shoshana.  I’m going to try to read as many of the six novels on the short list as possible by the time they announce the winner on October 15th.  I’ll write about them when I’m done.

If you love modern Hebrew poetry, the book These Mountains: Selected Poems of Rivka Miriam (The Toby Press, 2009), translated and with an introduction by Linda Stern Zisquit, must be a part of your collection.  This volume is the first time that a book-length translation of the poet’s work appears in English. As such, this new book makes an important contribution to contemporary Hebrew poetry available in English. Readers should be especially grateful that the publisher, Toby Press, continues to publish volumes of translated poetry that contain both the original Hebrew and the English side-by-side. This dual-language presentation adds depth even for those with only minimal Hebrew skills.

Rivka Miriam, born in Israel in 1952, is a child of Holocaust survivors who became a published poet at the age of fourteen. Her earliest poems were inspired by what she had learned about the Holocaust and her family’s experience. She is similarly influenced by Jewish texts and religious and theological ideas, some of which seeps into and infuses the poetry.

Rivka Miriam’s poems are deceptively simple at times. The language is straightforward, yet worlds are contained within it. Some lines come directly from Biblical or liturgical texts, while others could be everyday speech.

Biblical characters are featured in many poems, as in “The Stripes in Joseph’s Coat” which employs an economy of language to paint a rich history of Joseph’s whole ancestry. “The Song to Jacob who Moved the Stone from the Mouth of the Well” is a powerful, moving interpretation of the relationship between Jacob and Leah, told from Leah’s perspective, which contains the lines, “Flocks of sheep hummed beneath our blankets,/ tent-flies were pulled to the wind,” and ends with the lines, “And he didn’t know I was Leah/And flocks of sons broke through my womb to his hands.” This poem functions as modern midrash, which gives Leah a voice and adds a perspective missing from the Biblical text. God, too, appears frequently in the poems, an intimate presence with whom the poet is in relationship, as in “Still,” in which God knocks on the window and enters the room.

Many of the poems use maternal imagery such as breasts and nursing, as in “I Nurse a Very Old Woman,” or “Oh My Mother.” Sometimes these images are comforting and nurturing, but they can also be quite disturbing, as in the images of children suckling ash and leaves in “Never Will I Be Like the Mother in the Picture” or fire asking to be nursed in “The Fire, Blushing from Fear.”

The land of Israel is also a common theme in Miriam’s poetry. She writes of a mystical connection to the land, markedly different from so many of her Israeli peers who respond with irony when exploring a connection to the land. Hers is an unironic relationship, one that is deeply physical and sensual. The land in her poetry is a living being, a friend and sometimes a lover. In “These Mountains” the mountains sit in armchairs and eat cake like comfortable visitors while in “Lest it Be Revealed” in which “Only when my land is asleep/spread out before me/I whisper whisper her name/and she moans.”

There are references in this poetry to the pain and trauma of the Holocaust that Miriam’s family experienced. The two related poems “Chaya’s Unborn Child” and “And Shalom, Chaya’s Husband” speak of violence and loss with poignancy while avoiding any hint of sentimentality. These poems are disquieting, disturbing. There is a sense that the poet cannot help but bring forth what her legacy has bequeathed her, and that she is continually trying, over and over, to make sense of her family history of European suffering and the struggle of modern Israel.

Linda Zisquit has done a masterful job in these translations. She manages to convey both the directness and the richness of the Hebrew, while making the poems read as if they were always meant to be read in English. I can only hope that Miriam and Zisquit will continue to collaborate for years to come, and bring forth many more such volumes of achingly beautiful poetry. This volume includes an interview with Rivka Miriam, notes, and a translator’s note.  Go, fast, order it now!