Everyday Hero: Gloria Varney

Work? Family? What's the problem?

Get any two mothers together and the conversation will inevitably turn to the same topic: the juggernaut of work plus family. I ask Gloria if she doesn't find it awfully hard to juggle the demands of her business while raising five children. Gloria doesn't sigh or kvetch or offer up tales of domestic drama.

In fact, I don't think I've ever met anyone who is as clear and unconflicted on this issue as Gloria is. Work? Family? What's the problem? Of course, you can have both!

Indeed, on the day of my visit, Gloria's son Roy, age 3, is hanging out with his mom, noshing on an enormous slice of freshly baked bread thickly spread with homemade organic butter and strawberry preserves from the family's pantry. Baby Everett is parked right inside the front door of the store, an irresistible, toothy-grinned greeter.

I think back to the many times I have shushed and shooed my five-year-old out of the room so that mommy could "talk business" on the telephone, or left my three-year-old at the front door, beseeching, "I wanna go to the meeting with you!" What's so offensive about a child's voice burbling in the background? Why not pack up the baby and throw some crayons in the briefcase? What is the problem?

Watching her in action, I feel my post-Starbucks perktitude giving way to wonderment. How, I ask myself, does she do it? How does she plow through the myriad tasks that await her every predawn, when a productive morning back at my place is one where I've managed to finagle a shower with a child standing sentry outside the curtain, one hand reaching in to grip the lax meat of my thigh like a handrail?