BookBrowse Reviews It. Goes. So. Fast. by Mary Louise Kelly

BookBrowse:

A year before her firstborn left for college, beloved NPR anchor Mary Louise Kelly decided it was time to move her family commitments up the priority list. This is the fruit of her reflections.

Before my husband and I got married, we planned for me to stay home when the kids came along. As such, I had a front-row seat to the societal arguments over career versus full-time motherhood. When I began writing from home, I progressed from feeling smug and self-righteous for having chosen domestic life to feeling torn between two equally beautiful callings—like so many other mothers who have worked in a field for which they have a passion. As I write these words, my firstborn is graduating high school.

So the premise of Mary Louise Kelly's It. Goes. So. Fast. resonated instantly. Her son James is entering his final year at home and, recognizing how often she has prioritized work over family, she commits to putting family first for the time she has left. Kelly, known and beloved as an interviewer and anchor at NPR, proves herself to also be a sensitive memoirist. In these pages, she brilliantly represents all mothers who have ever struggled with work-family life balance.

Despite the back cover blurb, It. Goes. So. Fast. is not a chronology of James' senior year. It's more "mommy blog meets seasoned NPR interviewer." Kelly knows how to ask the questions that get to the heart of the matter. Here, she turns those skills on herself. As she tries to be fully present in James' last year at home, she reflects on her entire journey as a parent and a journalist.

Each of her essays begins with a memorable moment which, in turn, triggers a memory of an encounter or an incident from an earlier stage of life. The book's first essay describes an encounter Kelly had with a fellow mom-journalist at a time when she had taken a leave of absence from NPR to stay home with James, who needed developmental therapy. When her colleague didn't even recognize her in her ratty jeans and sweatshirt, Kelly had a bit of a crisis, because she didn't recognize herself, either. But the story comes full circle through an exchange with the same woman years later that casts the whole episode in a new light.

This is the magic of Kelly's beautiful book. It begins with the commitment to live in the moment, but as she struggles to keep that vow, she discovers that there really isn't a single moment; that, in fact, all the moments of our parenthood, childhood and later lives are connected, shedding light on each other. The situations she encounters in her work life—when a political figure behaves badly in an interview, for instance—impact what she wants to teach her boys. At the same time, the values she's already striving to teach them come into play in the middle of that difficult professional situation, helping to illuminate her path forward.

And, of course, sprinkled into these reflections we get the "senior year" moments, too. We tag along as Kelly visits colleges, watches (and misses) soccer games, and more. One of my favorite anecdotes shows her at James' high school graduation, as students and faculty are processing in, still trying to help him return a textbook. That little vignette so clearly encapsulates the motherhood journey, I actually laughed out loud.

In these stories, by turns tender, humorous and poignant, Mary Louise Kelly invites us to examine how we navigate that impossible balance between family and the pursuit of professional excellence. She asks the questions that matter: If we suppress ourselves, what does that teach our children—boys as well as girls? How do we set boundaries and make space for living in the present when hard work and competence inevitably lead to people asking more and more of us? She does all this in a warm, winning voice that takes you into her head. This is a book to gobble quickly and also one to savor. I will return to it, because I know it will reveal more depths on repeated reads.

This review first ran in the June 7, 2023 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.