Karen gurgled happily in her push-chair, her fat legs kicking out once as she squirmed restlessly in her seat. I bent down to wipe away the trail of saliva running down her little chin. She reached up and wrapped her tiny hand around my finger, mouth open in an almost toothless grin. I smiled at her and tickled her chin. She laughed and let go of my finger. Her shoelace had come undone and I knelt to retie it.

"Dianne...? Dianne Hoffmann?"

I turned to see a woman who looked strangely familiar leaning out of the front window of a blue BMW which had pulled up behind me on the kerb. I straightened up as I recognized her. "Melanie Goldstein?" She had changed, but only slightly; her face was still the same, even without the glasses and the more mature angled lines of her face.

"Oh my God! It is you!" she squealed. In a second she was out of the car and rushing to give me a hug. We kissed each other on the cheeks. Then we seperated and stood back, looking at each other.

She looked good. Very good. From her high heels to her short skirt and low cut suit every inch a professional woman. "How are you?" I asked, my surprise and pleasure broadcast clearly in my voice.

"I'm doing okay. I'm the new associate at this law firm in the city. I just moved here about a week ago. How are you doing? Can you imagine? I haven't seen you in...13 years!"

Since college.

"I'm doing okay, I guess." I said. Off to my side, Rachel was bending down, picking at something wedged in a crack in the pavement. "Rachel, stop that!" I said.

Melanie's face underwent the usual transformation that affects adults when they see babies. My two-and-a-half year old daughter quickly waddled back to me and grabbed my leg, peeking out shyly from behind me at Melanie. And in response, Melanie bent down in front of me to Rachel's level, with a doe eyed smile on her face. "These are your kids? They're so beautiful!" she said to me, her voice softened. "Rachel, come here, Rachel!"

Instead, Rachel hid even further behind me, burying her face into my side. I reached down to stroke her hair. "She's very shy." I told my former class mate. "Karen is much more friendly"

As if to confirm what I said, my eight month old daughter gave a delighted squeal at nothing in particular, at least nothing I could see, and kicked again, making the chair move. And strong too.

Melanie reached up and tickled her tiny chin and she laughed, grabbing for her finger. Melanie smiled, her delight showing clearly on her face. "You're so lucky." she said quietly, looking up at me. She stood, after tickling Karen one more time. She looked at her watch "I have to go. Sooo...where do you work? We can meet up and have lunch sometime. We have a lot of catching up to do."

"I'm not working right now." I said.

Melanie looked dumbstruck. Remembering our college days I couldn't blame her. I was one of the more ambitious girls in our dormitory, back when her room was only two doors away from mine. No, I shouted back then, my career would come first! I would be a success! I will not be dependent on a man to take care of me!

I gave her my home number and promised we'd have lunch some time later. She got into her car and drove on. No longer having any reason to hide, Rachel flopped down and began rolling around on the grass. To my surprise, I discovered Karen had fallen asleep in her push-chair. I smiled as I absent mindedly stroked her hair and arranged her more comfortably in her seat. I pushed the chair over to the nearest bench and sat down.

But my mind was stuck on the look on Melanie's face when I told her I wasn't working. What was she thinking? Was that disappointment I saw in her eyes? Did she think I was a failure?

To be honest, back in College I never thought at thirty-three I'd one day be sitting in a park with two babies at two-thirty in the afternoon, instead of being the head of some giant Multinational Company. It probably would have sounded too Stepford Wife-ish to me and my friends. Too much like "giving in to the Patriarchy".

Had I failed? Had I become one of those women who vicariously lived life through their husbands and children, never doing anything for themselves? The type of women I learned to despise back in my college and high school days? Where did I go wrong?

I found myself looking back at my life. I was born into a very traditional middle-class family. Dad went to work. Mom stayed at home. No...not stayed. Worked at home. I had an elder brother and sister and two younger brothers. All of us are married now. I remember how I always used to compete with my immediate younger brother. For attention, for grades, for everything. He was the bane of my existence...and my absolute best friend.

When I started elementary school, I was the stereotypical girl; I played with dolls, had tea parties and went to ballet class. I always did well in class and my mother and father used to show me off to their friends. Their clever little girl.

Then I went to High School. I had my first date in my second year, just after my growth spurt. It was probably the most embarassing time of my life. I suddenly began bleeding every month, I had suddenly had breasts , and boys were no longer "icky". I became a feminist in my senior year in high school. Any time I heard "Girls can't...", "Girls don't...", or "Girls shouldn't..." I marched straight up to that chauvinist and gave him hell. Two days after the senior prom I lost my virginity in the back of my boyfriend's car. He had pressured me on prom night but I wasn't so sure. But I warmed up to the idea soon enough after that.

College was fun. I had broken up with my high school boyfriend and was now looking forward to meeting and mating with the more mature college men. Or maybe me and my girlfriends, Melanie included, were a bit too dedicated to the words of Germaine Greer. I joined all the feminist organisations on campus and was active in every one for the first two years of my stay. I think we were all born in the wrong time, we would have been in our element in the college campus of the seventies. "Liberating the feminine eros" was what we called our dedication to hedonistic meaningless sex, our own feminist way of expressing independence by not letting ourselves be "sexually restricted by the Patriarchy". Despite that, by the time I graduated I had been in three serious relationships, all in my junior and senior years. I was actually thinking of marriage and children with the last one when I discovered he was cheating on me. I was a good student though, I graduated Magna Cum Laude, majoring in Business Administration, with a minor in Marketing.

I got a job in a bank back home as soon as I came back. It was one hell of a lucky break. Once in, I did everything I could to get noticed. The manager noticed, and he took me under his wing. And a year-and-a-half later, when a job opened for an assistant manager in our branch in New York, I got the offer. I moved to New York and two months later I met my husband. He was a low level executive in a small computer company that had its offices across the street. Henry was attractive, warm and nice, so when he asked me out I had no reason to say no. We had sex on our second date, and our third, and fourth... We got married a year later. I continued to work for two years until one day, I forgot the pill and I got pregnant.

He was overjoyed, I was terrified, and excited at the same time. Still, I continued to go to work. He bought baby clothes, drove me Lamaze classes and generally seemed more excited than me. I gave birth to our son nine months later; my water broke just when I was getting out of bed. John Broderick Richardson. He was so beautiful. It was the first time I ever saw Henry cry.

Things changed after that. Despite all my determination to go back to work as soon as possible I couldn't bear the thought of leaving John alone or with anybody else. So I resigned my job and became a full-time mother. My life revolved around him. Henry felt left out, I think. We began to argue a lot. He was constantly working overtime to make up for our loss in income from my dropping out of the workforce and I was tired after a day of taking care of baby who always woke us up three times a night. I came close taking John and leaving several times but I...we hung on.

Henry's hard work paid off and he got promoted. And John was almost two years old. He hardly woke us up at night anymore. I stayed at home until he was three, then I got restless. I wanted to go back to work again. We hired a professional nanny for John, thanks to Henry's promotion we could afford it now. Then I dusted off my resume and went out to look for a job again. I had gained a good reputation back where I used to work so it was relatively easy to get a job as an assistant manager in an up and coming marketing firm. I had to work up from scratch again but I loved it. I was happy and for that time my marriage was bliss.

Then three years later, Henry woke me up early one morning with a lavish kiss and in response I pulled him down to me. We made love until it was time to go to work. A month later, after a missed period, a home pregnancy test confirmed it. I was pregnant. Like before, I had mixed feelings about it. But I wasn't scared this time, I was uncertain. My career was just beginning to take off and I knew myself enough to know I would never be comfortable with letting any of my babies be taken care of by a stranger while they were still too young. It would mean staying at home for at least three years. It was a difficult choice, but I chose to keep my baby.

So I left the work-force for the second time, but my boss promised me a place worthy of my talents in the company when, not if, I come back. Six weeks later, I gave birth to Rachel and then it was back to living on one source of income, being woken up three times every night and...Henry working overtime to make up for it. The fights started all over again. I thought we could pull through. I was wrong.

Henry started working late, too late. I looked through our credit records and sure enough, there it was. He had spent a fortune on flowers and jewelry I never saw. I challenged him and showed him my proof, and he didn't even try to deny it. My world was shattered. Was he in love with her? Why did he betray me like this? How could he? Then I got angry, and I ordered him out of the house. But he didn't want to leave. Instead, he moved into the spare bedroom. He said he still loved me, he wanted us to work it out. I wanted to hurt him back for what he did to me; I almost slept with one of my former work mates. But I simply couldn't. I still loved my husband, still wanted him in my life. We went for counselling and tried to "reconcile our pain". But it simply wasn't working. I was slaving all day at home with the baby, I was tired from lack of sleep and coupled with that, I was suspicious every time he came home late from work, even though I knew he was doing overtime and he had promised me that he had finished with her. We were fighting all the time now. I almost gave up and left with the children. At one point I was nothing more than an emotional wreck, crying all day and night for a whole week. Then finally, we sat down to talk, really listen to each other. He said I had shut him off from me. I've never had time for him since the baby arrived and what was more, I never let him take care of the children. I always criticized him even when he was trying his best. He had felt left out and useless. But he never said I pushed him to cheat on me. He put the blame squarely on himself and I loved him for that.

I simply told him how hurt I was at what he did to me and how much I needed him, not more money, and he swore never to hurt me again. We slept together that night. And then we started all over again. I let him take care of the baby more, and he began to come home earlier, and we became close again. Four months later, I got pregnant again. Despite my knowing that it would delay my return to my career by maybe another two years, I decided to have this last one. I had Henry with me. I didn't feel alone anymore. He had a reversible vasectomy done as soon as I came home from the hospital with Karen. These past eight months have been among the happiest in my life.

So here I was, sitting on a park bench in the middle of the afternoon with two of my children, for all intents and purposes, doing nothing. A lot of my friends are executives in big companies, and some are even owners of companies. But a lot of my friends are stay-at-home mothers. Did they think they were failures?

I smiled. Did I think they were failures? No. Some of them are planning on going back to work, just like me, others had never wanted to be anything but full-time mothers. But a lot of them are among the strongest, most dynamic women I'd ever met. I don't think they thought of themselves as failures. And to be honest, neither did I. Just like me, they've made their choices and they were living with them. The fact that they may not have been the right choices doesn't really matter.

The important thing was that the choices I made were mine to make. I could have chosen a different path from the one I'm on now. I could have chosen to not to marry my husband, I could have chosen not to keep my children, I could have chosen to go back to work as soon as I was out of the delivery room, I could have chosen to leave Henry... But I chose different. I may have made the wrong choices, only time would tell. But they were still mine to make. And I am ready to take whatever comes my way because of them.

So am I a failure?

"No," I said to myself, "I don't think so."

I stood up and called to my daughter, who was trying to catch a butterfly as it wove around her head, "Come on Rachel. It's time to go home. Daddy's waiting for us."

DIANNE H. RICHARDSON