Who Would You Be

The tree is up.

The Christmas cards have shipped...at least that's what the email claims.

The Santa Wish Lists have been made.

The first ice and semi-snow has fallen.

Black Friday specials are hitting us from every direction.

And as is traditional with me, when the cold weather hits, I try to stay active but outside of the every- other-day run, I find myself hunkered down in our bungalow with lots of books and a favorite television series. 

I know I'm late to the party, but my new ridiculous obsession is the HBO series "Newsroom," created by the off-the-charts fabulous Aaron Sorkin.

If you don't know it, here's a trailer from the season one premiere...

The show is now knee-deep in it's third season and if I weren't a mother, I swear to God, I would binge watch episode after episode, hour after hour, day after day, until it was done.  As it stands, I've been staying up until midnight for the past few nights savoring every word that the brilliant Aaron Sorkin has written.

And this is the question...if you weren't putting up the tree with all of the ornaments labeled with "Kate 2013" and sweet little hands and angels....if you weren't signing the names and ages of your children to the dutiful holiday card...if you weren't responsible for getting them to and from ballet, piano, football and the like, what would you be doing?

I would be Maggie on the"Newsroom."  Bright, neurotic, incredibly hard working, willing to do whatever it takes to get the story right and in constant dilemma over making her love life work.  And then, I'd be Mackenzie in phenomenal heels running on espresso while she guides the hearts and minds of her senior reporters and producers to make the news, not an entertainment show.

And these are the silly things I think about...what would I/will I be doing when the center of my universe isn't motherhood?  And if I were doing it...would I be happy?

Do you ever play that game with yourself?  Where you re-trace your steps and think?  Hmm...if I'd only have gone to graduate school for that thing or stayed in that city or took that job...would I be in a newsroom?

My husband just laughs at me.  He knows that I can barely stay up past 10pm which means that I can rarely watch the news let alone produce it.  He also knows that I can't stand the idea of hurting someone's feelings let alone ripping into them to ensure that I get the facts precisely and accurately right while being the first outlet to announce it.  He also knows that the idea of being wedded to my job has never really worked for my soul.

But somewhere deep inside, there's a part of me that yearns to know that woman and to see who she'd be if she'd been born in a different age, at a different time, under different circumstances.  Would she live in a major market, catching the scoop with a team of people just as under paid as she convinced that the American people deserve to know the truth?

Maybe...

But most likely, she'd be living in Omaha, Nebraska stringing popcorn and cranberries along the tree figuring out how to keep Santa alive for her children.

Sometimes, though, it's fun to think about life in an alternate time and place.