NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly On Work, Motherhood, And Almost Having It All

It’s a story familiar to any working parent. You get a call. It’s your child’s school saying they are sick and to come get them. And you can’t because you’re at work.

Sometimes it’s just a bump on the head, but sometimes it’s serious.

For NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly the call came while flying in a Blackhawk helicopter in Iraq. And it was really serious.

She says this was a moment when she “hit a wall” and the choice became clear – her family needed her and that was more important than dropping into war zones. A few months later, she decided to leave her job as Pentagon correspondent at the network.

But as her kids grew, and their need for her waned, she went back to the newsroom, and found herself choosing the war zone.

Then came her eldest son’s senior year of high school. She realized something was coming to an end and wanted to be there for it. So she once again reshuffled her priorities to savor what she saw as the last months of living under the same roof as a family of four with her husband and two sons.

She tells this story in a new book “It. Goes. So. Fast: The Year of No Do-overs,” a memoir about work, family, and almost having it all.