NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly describes how she balances her career and family in new book

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Many parents wrestle with balancing the competing demands of their personal and professional lives.

  It's a struggle that NPR co-host Mary Louise Kelly recently discussed with Amna Nawaz. And it's also the focus of Mary Louise's deeply personal new memoir, "It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs."

• Amna Nawaz:

  Mary Louise Kelly, welcome to the "NewsHour." Thanks for being here.

  Mary Louise Kelly, Author, "It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs": Thank you, Amna. It's a pleasure.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So this is a book about you, your family, your boys.

  But you put it very succinctly in the book early on. You say: "This is a book about what happens when the things we love, the things that define and sustain us come into conflict."

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What did you mean by that?

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  I meant I have wrestled for years, like I think many parents do, with trying to balance a family I love and a job I love.

  And, to my great surprise, I found it was getting harder. Like, the deals I was cutting with myself were getting harder as my kids got older, which was not what I was expecting. And I decided to write what was the last year that I knew my family would all be intact and under one roof, because my oldest son was about to be a senior in high school.

  And we were all under one roof. And I thought about all the choices I have made over the years. And I thought I want to wrestle with this year in real time. So I wrote the book in real time to kind of see what stuck, whether I was getting it right or wrong.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tell me about your kids.

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  I have two boys. They're two years apart, both teenagers.

  My oldest, as I say, was heading into his senior year of high school last year. And the thing that I kept circling back on, because it just brought everything to such a sharp point, was that child loves soccer. That's his thing. His games are weekdays at 4:00. I have a conflict at 4:00. It's when my show goes on the air. I can't be there.

  And, for years, I said, well, I will figure this out next year. But then ninth grade slid into 10th, slid into 11. And, suddenly, he's a senior, and I have no more chances. Like, there's no more do-overs. There's no more rethinking this.

  And it really brought home to me all of the choices that I have made and thinking not so much what would I do differently, because you can't turn back that clock…

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  .. but thinking, how have these choices impacted my family? How have they impacted me? What would I learn if I just sat and kind of reckoned with this for a year?

• Amna Nawaz:

  There's one particularly difficult decision you write about after a particularly poignant moment when you're in Baghdad, and you decide these two things have come into conflict at a point that's no longer sustainable.

  Tell me about that moment.

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  That moment, I was in Baghdad. I was covering a visit by the defense secretary.

  What threw the day out of whack was an incoming call from the school nurse back in Washington, who wanted to tell me that my youngest son was sick, and when could I get there? And I kind of thought, if you could see where I am, it's not happening today or tomorrow or anytime soon.

  And before I could say any of that, she starts speaking more loudly and saying: "I don't mean to bring him home. I mean, he's really sick. He's struggling to breathe. We need to get him to a doctor or the hospital. We're already" — and I started running through the time zone calculations on where's my husband and where's the babysitter and what can I do, and I lost the cell phone line. The signal died.

  And I had to get into a helicopter. And I do remember just being in the air looking down over the traffic and thinking, what am I doing with my life? My son needs me, and I'm halfway around the world. And I love my job. And I'm good at it. And I worked hard to get here. But this is not working for my family. And I hit a wall.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You decide to leave. Eventually, you do come back to this work that you love.

  And, as you well know, this job is one that requires you to just get up and go sometimes, right? So that guilt can really weigh heavy on you. You write about, later in life, though, you cornered one of your sons. And you asked him about it. And you said, has there ever been a time when you really needed me and I wasn't there because of my work?

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  I was so curious what the answer would be.

  I asked him that question, Amna. He looked at his shoes for so long. I could feel my heart thumping, thinking he's about to really let — like, the litany of things I have done to damage this child must be very long. And he eventually looked up and said: "I'm sure there must have been times, mom, but I can't remember. And could I have 15 bucks for Chipotle?"

  (LAUGHTER)

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  OK. I must have done something halfway right, if that's the biggest grievance you can come up with.

• Amna Nawaz:

  There's going to be a lot of working parents who read this. And we have to remind everyone we live in a country where the childcare crisis is real, right?

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  We don't have paid family leave for most people. Families with two working parents are still struggling to make ends meet.

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What is it that you hope they take away from your story?

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  I hope that, whether you look like you're at the top of your game or not, not a single one of us has figured this out.

  I had so many conversations as I was writing this with girlfriends, with work colleagues. And we all — I will speak for myself. I have spent a lot of time beating myself up over the years for my inability to do what is, in fact, impossible, to be in two places at once, to be at the White House doing that — the interview that you have spent months trying to get, or be in the Black Hawk in Iraq, and be home when your kids need you.

  And the graciousness that I have tried to extend to myself, which I'm so good at extending to other people, but have not extended to myself in these years, and realizing, I'm fortunate. My kids are fine. They're healthy. I can't be in two places at once.

  And I have done, as I explain in the book, a lot of on-ramping and off-ramping and leaning in and leaning out over the years. But I think that's the takeaway. We're probably all do a little bit better than we think.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You also write very honestly about aging…

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  … and how you think about it at this stage of life.

  You talk about women who've allowed their hair to go gray and how men are granted sort of the assumption of credibility and gravitas when they get older. That's something women do not have. Do you feel like it's getting better, though, that double standard going away?

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  No, to be completely honest.

  I just turned 52. I write in the book about wrestling with feeling invisible in a way that I didn't imagine. At 52, people stop driving past and giving you a wolf whistle. And I can't believe I'm admitting this out loud, because it drove me crazy in my 20s and 30s. But now I kind of miss it.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You miss the wolf whistle.

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  I admit that I miss the wolf whistle.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  And, again, my 20–or-30-something self would come slap me hard for saying that and saying, what are you talking about?

  (LAUGHTER)

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  And I was I'm not claiming I ever was Cindy Crawford or something or that I am condoning men behaving or anyone behaving in offensive ways.

  It's not that. It's the — how we move through the world and how the world perceives us changes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Have your boys read the book?

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  They have read parts of it. They were required to read chapters in which they each feature prominently…

  (LAUGHTER)

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  … because, partly, I needed them to help me fact-check. And they did. And they had some good suggestions.

  They had veto power over it, because this is my memoir. It was my book about my struggles. But they're right in there. And I didn't want to put anything into the world that they didn't feel comfortable with. So they had veto power over it.

  But I hope that has been — it's been fun to watch their reaction and laughing over the chapters that they remember differently from me.

• Amna Nawaz:

  The book is "It. Goes. So. Fast." The author is Mary Louise Kelly.

  Thank you for being here.

• Mary Louise Kelly:

  It was my pleasure. Thanks, Amna.

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