NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly talks about her memoir, "It Goes So Fast."

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: For close to two decades, Mary Louise Kelly has made a mark as a standout host and reporter for NPR. She’s now an anchor for their afternoon show All Things Considered.

In her new memoir, she shares what’s it like to grow older when you're in the public eye, a heartbreaking moment while on assignment and that we should all strive to be gentler with ourselves.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

James Brown:

Hello and welcome to 5 Things. I'm James Brown. It's Sunday, April 16th, 2023. Go Bills. Every week we take an idea or concept and go deep. In this week we're getting personal with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. For close to two decades, she's made a mark as a standout host and reporter for NPR. She's now an anchor of their afternoon show, All Things Considered. In her memoir called It Goes So Fast, she shared the ups and downs along the way and what it's like to grow older in public, and a heartbreaking moment while on assignment. Mary Louise Kelly, welcome to the program.

Mary Louise Kelly:

Thank you, James. So happy to be with you.

James Brown:

Some of our listeners will know you from NPR and other places professionally. A book like this changes that. Why did you do it?

Mary Louise Kelly:

It was the last year that my son, who last year was a high school senior, was guaranteed to live at home under the same roof. So the last year that all four of us were going to, and I to my surprise, had for a little while been finding the whole juggle, the work-life balance, the can you have it all, whatever you want to call it, I had been finding that getting harder as my kids got older and I had always thought it was supposed to get easier and it didn't. It does in some ways. Obviously, they don't need me to bathe them or brush their teeth now that I have teenagers, but the trade-offs and the deals that I was cutting with myself, it felt like the stakes were getting higher and I wanted to wrestle with that in real time.

James Brown:

Tell me about those stakes?

Mary Louise Kelly:

Here's the most pointed example I can give you, James. I have two boys. They love soccer. It's their thing. It's what animates their life. On weekdays, their varsity high school games are at four o'clock in the afternoon, which is the exact minute that I go on air with All Things Considered, is at four o'clock every afternoon. I cannot anchor a national broadcast from the bleachers. And so every single time it's been a direct conflict and for years I've settled, "Next year I'll figure this out. Next year I'll find a way to be there," and suddenly my son was a senior and I was out of next times, and there were no more do-overs and the full weight of all the choices that I'd made over the years came back and hit me pretty hard.

James Brown:

You say that there's this ongoing tension throughout your life as you raise your children and have this demanding job. Can you tell us a bit about how you balance it?

Mary Louise Kelly:

I know how lucky I am to have a job that I love that makes it hard to choose, and I know I'm lucky to have a choice in how I spend my time. For me, the thing that took me a long time to get was I've always said, "Look, when my work and my kids both need me, the kids come first." I'm a mom first. My job is important, but somebody else ultimately can do it, whereas nobody else can be the mom to my kids, and that's a really great rule for all the urgent moments. The harder choices are the gray area. It's the like every Thursday, four o'clock soccer game. The stakes don't seem high until you add up the number of choices you've made over and over and over and over and over, and I don't think anybody gets it right all the time, and I don't think your kids expect you to, and I don't think your job expects you to.

And one of the takeaways I've had with really wrestling with this for years, we could all stand to be just a little gentler with ourselves. If you're getting up and doing your best every day, chances are it's going to turn out all right.

James Brown:

Do you find yourself compensating for missing those soccer games? Obviously they mean a lot to you.

Mary Louise Kelly:

Yeah, they do. And that's the other thing you realize is that my kids are fine. I'm the one who has missed those moments and is reckoning with that you just cannot be in two places at once. Not everybody listening and watching is apparent or has kids at these ages, but I think almost all of us have reckoned with that feeling of, "I need to be in two places at once, or two things that I really care about are coming into direct conflict."

James Brown:

That reminds me of an interesting moment in your book. You describe learning that your son Alexander was sick while being abroad. Tell us what happened and how did it feel?

Mary Louise Kelly:

I got a call as I was trying to board a helicopter in Baghdad, wearing full body armor and helmet, and this phone call comes in and I had to took my helmet back to answer it and tell the caller to shout over the noise of a Black Hawk about to take off. And it turns out it's the school nurse back in Washington and she wants to tell me, my youngest son is sick and can I get there? And I'm like, "Nope, not happening today or even tomorrow." And then she does start yelling and said, "I don't mean to bring him home. He's really sick, he's struggling to breathe. How fast can you get here? We need to get him to a doctor."

And I'm trying to figure out what's the time zone difference? And I lost the call. The signal went out and I had to get in this helicopter and take off. And it was a few hours before I got signaled back and found out that he was fine. That's the happy ending to that particular story. He's now a happy, thriving boy, several years older. But that moment of being up in a helicopter thinking, "I love my job and I worked really hard to get here and I'm good at it, but my son needs me and he's halfway around the world and I can't get there. What am I doing?" I don't know a parent on the planet who hasn't gotten a call and not been able to be there when their kid needed them, that it's not like a stake through the heart and makes you examine your choices so closely.

James Brown:

I've never been a parent. I'd like to be. I'm trying to think about those hours from that disconnected phone call, to you getting back in contact with the people in the States. Did you cry? Did you yell? What did you do? What happened?

Mary Louise Kelly:

All of the above. You obviously don't go on an extended work trip when you have young kids unless you've put all the backup systems in place, but yeah, not knowing quite how it turned out and just not being able to be there myself, I'm the mom. You feel like you want to swoop in and try to fix it. That's a just pure overpowering instinct as a parent. That night after I'd gotten cell phone signal back and knew everything was fine, I remember staying up really late in a sandstorm, trying to file my story, and then climbing into this bunk bed and just lying there and crying and just thinking, "I'm not comfortable with the choices I'm making right now. I should have been there."

And I took several years away from the newsroom after that and never stopped missing it. And then the boys got older and they were healthier and they were doing all right in school, and it felt like an okay moment to go all in again. So I went back.

James Brown:

Any regrets?

Mary Louise Kelly:

Oh, sure. We all have a million regrets, but I cornered my other son, my older one in the hall one day as I was writing about this and really thinking about it and asked him, "Was there ever a moment where you really needed me and I didn't come because I was working?" And he looked hard at me and then he looked down at the floor for a long time. That felt like a really long time, and I thought he is about to really let me have it. And he finally looked back up and said, "I'm sure there were, but I can't think of any, and could I have $15 for Chipotle?" Again, I spend at least a lot of time beating myself up for failing to do the impossible for not being able to be in two places at once, but I think if your kids can't even remember, you must be doing something right. You must be doing something okay.

James Brown:

Another very interesting moment from your book, I've never been cat-called. I'm a total novice at it.

Mary Louise Kelly:

There's still time, James.

James Brown:

Maybe it'll happen today. What's the experience like?

Mary Louise Kelly:

When you're a 20 something woman mentor and a look and they will whistle you. And if you had told my 20 something self that I would miss that and admit it publicly, she would've told you I'd gone bananas. I think what I was trying to write about and wrestle with was how surprised I have been by how very invisible a woman of 50 can suddenly feel. You couldn't move through a crowd and just feel totally invisible, and it's, again, I'm not condoning anybody acting like a jerk. I'm not saying I ever was some supermodel, but it is a change in the way that I think a middle-aged woman navigates the world and is seen by the world. And so much of this book was about interior things in my home or in my heart, and it occurred to me, I'm also wrestling with the missing being wolf whistled.

And it's not about I want some stranger leering at me. It's that feeling seen, feeling visible. That's what a wolf whistle is, and you can feel offended by it, and a lot of people do. You can find it annoying. I've been there, but it's also a gift if you choose to think of it that way. In that one split second, some stranger looks at you, locks onto you and really sees you. And a wolf whistle may be an imperfect metaphor for that, but that desire to be seen and acknowledged and, "Yeah, you're still here. You exist." I think it's real, and I will speak only for myself to say it has been surprising to me and perhaps shouldn't have been, but when it stops, you miss it.

James Brown:

As my producer and I have discussed this book in some of our conversations, Lean In has come to mine. Where does the Lean In argument stand today? What do you think about it?

Mary Louise Kelly:

Oh, that's a really good question because there's been so much judgment reigned down on Lean In on some of the privileges that Sheryl Sandberg enjoyed, enjoys, and was speaking from. At the time that Lean In came out and everybody was talking about it, was right at the moment after I got that phone call in Baghdad and I had done, I guess what you would call the reverse and decided to lean out and felt just fine with it and felt like that I was doing something just as valuable.

So I suppose over the years become a lot less judgmental about the choices that other people make than I was in my 20s. I don't necessarily buy that the woman who's running a company is doing so much more with her life than the woman who's negotiated a two or three-day week. While still finding it impossible to anchor a national broadcast, a national news broadcast from the soccer bleachers, I'm just so grateful for the gazillion ways that we've all figured out to intertwine work and home and family and everything else in ways that I don't think our moms or grandmothers ever imagined being able to do, or fathers or grandfathers for that matter.

I'm all for leaning in at certain points and then way more okay with leaning way out than I would've told you I was 25 years ago. The unwrinkly woman getting wolf whistled found that harder to deal with. So that's one of the benefits that come from getting a little older.

James Brown:

Any famous last words?

Mary Louise Kelly:

Oh, I don't think so. Other than just that being as kind to yourself as you would to other people and the people you love, maybe that's what makes all the difference. Not that you're going to nail the right choice every time, but that you learn to live with and be happy with the choices you do make.

James Brown:

Mary Louise Kelly, thank you for joining me.

Mary Louise Kelly:

James, it was a pleasure. Thank you.

James Brown:

Thanks to Mary Louise Kelly for joining me, and to Shannon Rae Green and Alexis Gustin for their production assistance. You can email podcast@usatoday.com with your thoughts on the show. For all of us at USA Today, thanks for listening. I'm James Brown, and as always, be well.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly talks about her memoir, "It Goes So Fast."