Your Family: How It Works

Special Installment: Mother’s Day
How do mothers do it? Juggling the work and school schedules for the entire family, she seems to do the impossible. Mary, mother of Jesus, didn’t always have it together and one day faced a mother’s worst nightmare.

The list is long, and always growing. At the top, in capital letters, are two words: MUST REMEMBER.

It’s a deluge of self-imposed demands: Write thank-you letters ... Buy new ballet leotard for daughter Emily (blue, not pink) ... Return call from sister ... Ask cool friend what is gansta rap. No cool friends. Make cool friend .... Baby sitter Saturday/Wednesday, pay newspaper bill/read back issues of newspapers, call nanny temp agency ... Trim son’s nails ... Dentist appointment ... Return Snow White video to library ... Be nicer, more patient person with daughter, so she doesn’t grow up to be a needy psychopath.

This is just one of the “must remember” lists compiled by Kate Reddy, the working mother at the heart of Allison Pearson’s best-selling novel I Don’t Know How She Does It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). Mothers around the world can certainly relate to her endless lists, compiled while walking through life in what she describes as a “lead suit of sleeplessness.” And on this...