Commercial break. “You’re going viral right now,” a producer brightly informed her.
Viral didn’t sound good. She grabbed her phone. The clip was already all over Facebook. What a nightmare, Dillon thought, as she watched herself, eyes shut, head in her hands, for five excruciating seconds.
She dreaded reading the comments.
Show up on time. No excuses.
That was her motto, even through the mind-bending exhaustion of early parenthood. Dillon worked from 3.30am to noon. The night before, her husband had pulled a double shift servicing cars for BNSF Railway.
Otherwise, he would have been around to help when her younger daughter resisted bedtime. The 8-month-old girl was teething and wailing. By the time Delilah settled, it was nearly 11pm.
Two and a half hours later, Dillon’s alarm sounded. She rushed to the gym for some StairMaster and weights before heading to the studio, where she ate a Jimmy Dean Delights English muffin with her Nespresso. (Had it been the damn muffin?) Then it was time for hair and makeup.
“Good morning!” she gushed when the show started at 4.30am. “Thank you for joining us.”
She had wanted to do this since she was a teenager in Oxnard, California, where she had volunteered with other members of her church at the strawberry festival. She was setting up a booth when a TV reporter asked her for an interview. It was professional love at first sight.
But breaking into the media industry was tough, so Dillon paid the bills at first as a flight attendant. In her spare time, she reported stories around her hometown on her iPhone and edited the footage into a highlight reel. That was enough to land a job in Texarkana, Texas, which led to another in Shreveport, Louisiana, which led to another in Memphis, where she fell in love, and two dreams collided: she became a mother and rose to the anchor seat.
Yes, Dillon was tired. She had returned from maternity leave in April. “Work-life balance” was still an aspirational term, especially since 2-year-old Dakota no longer took naps. That was her “little firecracker,” crazy about stickers, lollipops and her baby sister, whom she called “Yiya”. Delilah had the cutest giggle. She had just sprouted her fifth tooth.
The cliches were true. Every second was worth the trouble, even those five unconscious ones on live television.
She managed to make it through the last 90 minutes of the July 29 show, trying not to get distracted by whatever was happening online. She had turned off the notifications on her iPhone after glancing at Facebook.
“Dominique Dillon, you’re up and down my timeline sleeping,” someone had written, tagging her.
The anchor braced for digital impact. Viewers could be brutal. Over the years, a few had emailed her when they thought she had a bad hair or makeup day.
Now the interim news director appeared at her desk, asking to talk. Oh my God, Dillon thought. I am going to be in so much trouble.
But her new boss just seemed concerned.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, and it won’t happen again,” she swore, explaining that Delilah was teething.
The woman, also a mother, understood. And apparently, so did thousands of commenters. Some had seen photos of her girls. Strangers typed paragraphs in defence of her micro-nap. As the clip went viral, so did the support.
“She has two small children. Show her some grace!”
“Moms are human too on tv or off.”
“If it was me I’d probably have slob running down my face.”
“We’re just real people living real hard lives.”
“Look at the world having empathy. Are we evolving??”
“Every mom felt this.”
It was as if they could see and hear what was happening behind the scenes, she thought. Maybe they had also moved through life all strange and puffy-eyed and caught between competing worlds. Maybe they also had been drooled on.
Later, the Today show would call and offer to fly her to New York, and Dillon would joke that she needed to pinch herself again. Her bosses would put out a glowing statement, saying, “We couldn’t be prouder to have Dominique in the spotlight, highlighting how difficult it can be for new mothers to get back in the groove when returning to work.”
But at that moment, she just wanted to go home.
Her mother-in-law was watching the kids. Her husband was still in bed. He opened his eyes to watch the clip.
“That could have been worse,” he wisecracked.
Then he insisted on handling bedtime that night so she could rest.
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