We should all be as productive while multi-tasking as Cokie Roberts, a 60-year-old political analyst for ABC and National Public Radio as well as a syndicated newspaper columnist. She spoke to me by phone from her basement office in Bethesda, Maryland, where several grandchildren played on the floor as she assembled the footnotes for her new book. Her career is studded with accolades, including the Edward R. Murrow Award and an Emmy. She's written three books, two of which have been best-sellers: We Are Our Mother's Daughters and From This Day Forward.

    These days working while tending to toddlers is old hat. But when Cokie became a mother it was almost unheard of. Her son, Lee, arrived when Cokie was 24 and Rebecca when she was 26. "To show you how different an era it was, we didn't have even one second of conversation about me leaving my job. We both assumed I would leave. But I thought it was important for me to continue to work for my own sanity and because I thought it was expected of an educated person," she explains. Cokie continued writing and working in television, mostly from home, after her kids were born.

    Cokie remembers those years as baby mayhem. "We didn't have money. We didn't have help. Steve was away a lot," she remembers. "I say all of this by way of description--not by way of saying it was a hard life. I've been around people who've led really hard lives." Still, the day-in, day-out drudgery often made her feel trapped and muffled. Here's what she would like to say to herself as a young mother.

Dear Cokie,

    Is this a life sentence? Will you spend the rest of your life with jelly stains on your knees? Will your kids ever sleep through the night?

    Being the mother of two tiny kids frazzles you because the utterly banal is, somehow, profoundly important. Nothing could be more mindless than wiping noses and pouring apple juice--yet you know there's no bigger job. For so much to hinge on so little is brain-numbing. It's as if world peace depended on how well you dust your living room. Worse, you were never any good at homemaking arts, apart from cooking. Now you're supposed to put toys away and clean out the tub as if your children's entire future success hangs in the balance?

    This kind of absurd mismatch between day-to-day motherhood and the emotional charge it carries can be a little scary. Your kids, like all kids, are a pain in the neck sometimes. As a regular person in your regular life, you really don't get angry. But as a mother, you're shocked at your capacity for anger with your children. Instead of childish misbehavior, their transgressions seem like terrible reflections on you as a mother.

    Here's my advice about the anger, chaos and isolation. First, beware the dangers of extrapolation in motherhood. Despite his impressive tantrums, your willful son will not throw himself on the floor of grocery stores screaming for candy when he's grown up. Just because your daughter can't seem to stop talking now, doesn't mean she won't ever.

    Also, understand that this won't last forever. Don't feel oppressed by it. These are very short years in the scheme of life and you will live through them.

    You're trying to fit everything in at once, working for a TV station and a magazine. But Cokie, you'll be in the workplace for 50 years, literally. There's no need to be doing it all at once. At times you do have to, but there are times when you don't. You can leave the work world--and come back on your own terms.

    One more thing: there will be compensation! Your children will grow up to be charming and caring people-who will produce adorable grandchildren. Your willful son will someday have an extremely willful daughter. One of your daughter's sons will talk incessantly. And guess who will have patience for all of that and more? You.

Hang in there.

Love,
Cokie