The Lost Key

Any woman who has walked that delicate tightrope of balancing family and work knows the stress of trying to lean in both directions at once to keep one’s balance. Of course, it’s physically impossible to lean in two opposite directions at once, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.

About a year into my entrepreneurial venture, I was trying to overcome physics and lean in two directions simultaneously. Our company had finally secured a large contract and knew we now had to capitalize on the opportunity by producing with excellence. It was also fall baseball season, meaning that we were spending lots of time at the baseball field watching our son’s team. My husband and I were less than pleased with our son’s coach, who appeared to have a real temper problem that might have been appropriate for boot camp but not for a team of eleven year old boys. We made sure we were always there to keep an eye on how his poor leadership style was impacting our son, ready to make a change if the unhealthy aspects of this activity began to outweigh the healthy ones.

The day before one of the games, I had had to go back over to the office after going home to meet the kids’ bus, so they entertained themselves while I finished up some work. Little did I know that the way they had found to kill time was to retrieve the key from the lock in our file cabinet and play a “keep away” game with it on the carpeted floor of the workroom! That would have been fine, except that upon leaving they neglected to replace the key in the lock.

During the game the next day, I received a frantic call from my staff, there in the office working on a Saturday morning to meet our deadline. They could not find the key to the file cabinet, which held critical information needed to complete their task.  As I listened, I remembered that David and Allison had been playing in that room, and so I turned to our seven-year old daughter and asked, “Do you know anything about a key to a filing cabinet at the office?”

She replied, “David and I were playing with a key yesterday.”

“Where did you get that key?”

“Out of the front of the file cabinet, in the lock that is in the top drawer.”

“What did you do with it when you got through playing with it?”

“I don’t know.”

While I typically have unusually low blood pressure, it was probably at stroke level for the remainder of that game until David came off the field and I could ask him about the key. All I could think about was my staff there at the office, giving up their Saturday to meet a deadline, and because of my children they could do nothing.

When I finally was able to ask David about the key, he nonchalantly replied, “I don’t know. I guess it’s somewhere on the floor.”

As I seethed, I pushed the kids into the car and immediately drove over to the office, where everyone had left since there was no more work that they could do. Thank goodness they had left, as when I took my son and daughter into that room with the file cabinet, I just lost it. I had what we southerners refer to as an all out hissy fit.

“I cannot believe you lost that key! Couldn’t you have found something else to play with, or at least been responsible enough to put it back where you found it?! Do you know what you have done?! What you have cost the company?! Do you know how many people had their Saturday disrupted for nothing because of your carelessness?! Do you ever think of anyone but yourselves?! Are you trying to destroy my company??!!”

It continued to go downhill from there, making that hot-headed baseball coach look like Mother Teresa. My voice got louder and shriller as my kids just looked at me like I had lost my mind. I was yelling and crying and basically using this as an outlet for my weeks and months of overload and trying to do the impossible. The kids most certainly deserved to be reprimanded for their deed, but what was happening here was that I was feeling the need to reprimand myself for my inability to be perfect, and it was being directed toward them.

My guilt was almost unbearable. First, I had the guilt of employees working on Saturday when I, as owner of the company, was not. Secondly, I had the guilt of failing as a mother to teach my children responsibility. Thirdly, I had the guilt of being an imperfect individual. Just because only God can lean in two directions at once did not relieve me of the expectation that I should be able to as well.

For better or worse, my children have always had a very strong security in the bonds of family and their own value, so they did not take my behavior too personally. If my mother had done that to me I would have taken that guilt right off her shoulders and carried it around for years! In fact, I think I might have preferred that it have impacted them JUST A LITTLE more than it did, instead of their correct assumption that mom had gone insane for a few minutes and would get over it in time.

They still remember that day and we laugh about it. They give me credit for becoming temporarily insane and managing to dole out abuse only by words! I laugh along with them when they begin with, “Remember when we lost that key?”, but really, it hurts a place deep in my heart because it reminds me of the tremendous pressure I was placing myself under during those years. My intentions were good – to be the mother I wanted my children to have and to be the boss I wanted my employees to have – but I took my personal expectations to the extreme.

Over time, I did learn better balance. I most certainly never got it right. I remember one time a management consultant showing me a graphic of three interlinked circles, equal in size, and telling me that this is the way my life should look – three equal spheres representing work, family, and personal life. He asked if the circles in my life were equal, and I said, “Yes, but there are only two of them.” Ladies, you know without my telling you which circle was missing.

I’ve learned so much since then, and often I wonder if I would do things differently if I had it to do all over again. My answer is yes, but still I wonder if eventually in life we have to get things wrong before we are able to get them right. Maybe that’s why we correctly associate wisdom with age as we stumble our way through the road of life, ping ponging left and right off of the edges but moving forward nonetheless.

P.S. Yes, we found the key. Yes, we met our project schedule. Yes, my employees forgave me.