"What if I just want to be a mom? Not just as if that’s all and it’s easy but just as in ‘Can’t you just love me and be proud of me if I’m a mom, only?’"
“Don’t lie to yourself. You wouldn’t be happy with that.”
That’s beside the point. It’s sitting on a sofa across the room from the point. The point is, I want to know that you’d love and respect me if I decided that I want to focus on being a mother for a while–respect me enough to know that I know what I want. And if I don’t, I’ll fix it and you’ll be supportive either way. “They’re only this age once, and it wouldn’t be forever. They leave home eventually.”
“The woman I married would never ever be happy just raising kids.”
“And the man I married would never say something like that…" And neither of us should be using "nevers." "The fact is, if I did nothing but cook, and make a cozy home for our family, reading, and throwing dinner parties, I’d be happy. Planning menus. Art projects with the kids. I don’t need magazine articles written about me. I don’t. That’s what makes you happy, not me.”
“Please, I hear you talk. I live with you. I hear you at dinner parties when people ask you what you’re working on, and you tell them about your next book, or how you’re adopting your book into a movie.”
“People ask! In fact, I get so sick of talking about it, saying the same thing over and again, that I try to say as little as possible. I’d much rather discuss food!”
“You’re lying.”
“I hate when you do that. You give me no room to feel anything. You just shoot down anything that doesn’t align with your own opinions. You can’t even entertain the possibility that I’m being very honest with you.”
“That’s because you’re lying to yourself.”
“I talk about what I do because it’s what I do. If I did something else, I’d discuss that. And if we’re being really honest here, maybe you should consider the fact that my career is all YOU seem to tell people about me. You never talk about what kind of mother I am, what kind of cook, how I’m a foodie, how I want to throw ingredient/flavor parties. Instead, you go on about my work accomplishments, never my personal ones. And that’s all I think you see sometimes. We all want to be loved for who we are, not for what we do—and I think if you’re honest with yourself, Phil, you maybe wouldn’t love anyone who didn’t care about a career and instead cared more about "just" creating memories and a life life, not a work life.”
“And I think that’s just an excuse for you to go hide.”
