Sheila Curran, author of "Diana Lively is Falling Down"

In 1998, when my husband announced that he'd been invited to Oxford University for a year, I made an announcement of my own. I was having a mid-life crisis, thank you very much. Therefore, I wished to stay in Arizona and write fiction.

Unlike most normal red-blooded American women of a certain age, I hate to travel, unless it's to a familiar place, to see people I already know. For me, travel is an opportunity to be reacquainted with my dearest anxieties: flying, packing, shipwreck, public toilets, nameless indigenous insects and being stranded without lunch by the thief in the American Express commercial.

Fast forward a few months, past the marital haggling, through the packing-shrew stage, over the prone body of a woman who's discovered Valium ought not be combined with spirits, and you will finally see the happy couple and their two children ensconced in a charming Victorian in the Jericho section of Oxford. The wife is standing in front of a mirror, having a minor spell of "frock trauma" to mask the serious anxiety she feels about going to "dine in" at her husband's very prestigious Oxford College.

High Table is an English ritual in which the College fellows (professors) are served dinner at an elevated table in the midst of a glorious hall filled with fifteenth century furniture, tapestries etc. The wine changes with each course, and dignitaries sup with Britain's best and brightest under the watchful eye of past Queens and Kings of yore.

The couple arrive at the college just in time for sherry, and they are introduced to an older couple, the wife of which is seated next to Sheila. After a bit of wine, she eyes the American's name tag and says, "Good thing you have a different last name than your husband."

"How's that?" I asked, intrigued, as most older women seem to disapprove of such things.

"Fellows aren't encouraged to bring their wives to dine at High Table. They may bring their mistresses, or homosexual lovers, but not their wives."

"Why, how does that make you feel?" I sputtered.

"Well, I thought about it, and I realized that the purpose of High Table is the exchange of ideas. Women who are home with their children all day, what could they possibly add to the conversation?"

I went home and thought about this comment, which put a whole new spin on the concept of a "stay-at-home" mom. Having been at home with my kids for most of their early years, I had often joked about my recent intellectual lobotomy. However, it's one thing to poke fun at oneself, it's entirely another to accept at face value the assumption that raising children renders one incapable of stimulating conversation. Worse still -- I felt -- to accept the status quo in which one partner of the marriage is consigned to menial labor and continual interruption while the other gets to read great books and drink fine wine while tossing bon mots at the luminaries with whom he's dining.

What fascinated me most about this well-spoken dinner companion of mine was how she'd participated in her own demotion. The more women I met in Oxford, whose husbands had made it to the top of the academic mountain, the more I realized, however, that nothing about their situations was simple or straightforward. Most of them had advanced degrees and were every bit as smart as their husbands, and they were also devoted mothers and wives who saw how hard their mates had to work and wanted their children to have a happy childhood. It was, after all, a bargain we all make, in one way or another, when we decide to have children: somebody has to take care of them, and no matter how lovable they might be, doing so is often not as rewarding as Hallmark makes out.

The question of balancing your children's needs against your own is never easy, and so if there's any doubt, it usually feels safer to err on the side of the child. Oddly, though, being in a different country, with just slightly different customs, I found myself rebelling against the presumption that mothers could not have it all.

That year, my husband shared his sabbatical with me, spending the mornings with the kids so I could write. Somehow, the act of valuing my writing in this way was enough to get me started, and thus my story about a desperate British housewife trapped by her concept of her children's best interests grew into a comic novel for mothers who think, or those who vow to think, as soon as they can find the time.

Diana Lively is Falling Down is Sheila Curran's first novel.