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Tim raised a brow. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning that he’s looking for his life’s work right now. He doesn’t have that kind of ambition yet. Right now, he’s just trying to find something he’s good at that doesn’t stress him out.”
“And construction is that?”
“I think he likes being a member of a team and having no more pressure on him than there is on anyone else. And I think the repetitive motion is soothing for him. He doesn’t have to think or plan ahead, just follow instructions.”
“He’s a follower? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Some people justare, Tim. Not everyone wants to be groomed to be a manager of something or to own a company. And I think maybe he was afraid of that because he thought it was expected of him.”
Tim opened his mouth to rebut but closed it. She wasn’t wrong. Thathadbeen expected of Kevin. He was a Dowd, and Tim and Heidi both had high expectations for him, butanyparent would have for their kid.
Any parent who loved their kid, anyway.
“So, you’re saying I shouldn’t expect so much from him?” Tim asked hesitantly.
“No, Tim, I’m saying that right now, he doesn’t want a lot of responsibility. He’s not ready for it and I think deep down, he’s known for a long time he wouldn’t be. Maybe in five years, he’ll be confident enough to try to move up the ladder, and who knows? Maybe in five years, he’ll think boats are interesting.”
“I don’t know how to digest that. Why couldn’t he just tell us that?”
“Our parents are who we fear to disappoint the most, and we’re supposed to domorethan our parents did at the same age, right? That was my impression, anyway.”
“You’re an incredibly accomplished woman. What are you racing against?”
She shrugged and let out a dry little laugh. “The same clock as every other woman my age who’s trying to climb up the ladder of some professional field.”
“Explain it to me. Boat building is generally a male industry, sales and finance aside.”
“People assume that women are going to stall in their careers when they get to a certain stage. We don’t get the same opportunities our male counterparts do unless we shout from the rooftops that we’re notinterestedin putting down roots.”
“I don’t understand why that should happen.”
Valerie laughed, but there wasn’t a single hint of humor in the sound. “When a couple has a baby, who stays out of work longer? And which parent is less likely to return to work if a second child is born? And which parent always gets called first by the child’s school if he or she is sick or needs to be picked up?”
“Mom,” Tim admitted.
“Right. And because of that, if there’s even a remote possibility that’s what we have in our future, we get passed over for jobs. It doesn’t matter how excellent our work is or that we have a mitigation plan to minimize disruptions. The assumption is that we’re going to fail because we can’t have it all.”
Tim drew in a long, bolstering breath and forced it out through his nose.
That was something he couldn’t fix, and he had no reason to believe she was exaggerating. There had to be a reason there weren’t more lady CEOs, and that the ones who had made it to the top had done it at the expense of so many other things in their lives.
“It’s not that Idon’twant what you’re offering me, Tim. I do. I want you, and the house, and the kids to go inside it. I want the boat trips and the aimless travel. But my career is also important to me. I’ve put my all into getting where I am. I’ve had some stumbling blocks, sure, but I’m moving forward, not backward. That’s more than I can say for a lot of people my age.”
“So, youdowant me.”
“Yes! That was never to be debated. And I’ve thought this through so many ways and tried to figure out how to have everything. I’ve done the brainstorming, and talked to others who’ve been in similar places, but I just don’t know how to make it happen. I don’t want to be where my mother was.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“Well, she was brilliant. Just,generallybrilliant, you know? Not just professionally, but in every aspect of her life. She excelled because she had the intelligence, the ambition, and the energy to do so. She was on a tenure track at the university she taught at. She wassoclose. Maybe a year from tenure because one of the professors in her department was about to retire and she hit all the right notes to be the next in line.”
“What happened?”
Valerie expelled some more of that mirthless laughter. “A man happened. I was born and then my sister a little over a year later. The professor finally retired. My father left. Of course, they would never admit that we were the reason she got passed over, but the puzzle pieces all fit. They put a younger, less qualified adjunct professor into the tenured spot. He’d barely cleared his probationary period.”
“So, a man.”
