I worked every hour I could get for the first ten years of my children's lives. I told myself I was doing it for them, and I believed it. What I did not understand is that a child cannot eat a mortgage payment. They cannot hold a promotion. What they can hold is the memory of whether you were in the room. My son is thirty-one now. Last year he told me the best thing about his childhood was that I always came to the door when he got home. Not the house. Not the holidays. The door.