In a candid new interview, First Lady Chirlane McCray admits she initially struggled adjusting to her role as mother – and still feels guilt about needing time apart from newborn Chiara.
“I have thousands of photos of her-every 1-month birthday, 2-month birthday. But I’ve been working since I was 14, and that part of me is me. It took a long time for me to get into ‘I’m taking care of kids,’ and what that means,” McCray told New York Magazine.
Part of the reason she had such a hard time, she speculated, was her age.
“I was 40 years old (when Chiara was born). I had a life,” she said.
She said she looked for “all kinds of reasons” to spend time apart from the baby, and asked rhetorically “Will we feel guilt forever more?”
She answered her own question, “Of course yes.”
The piece focuses on the personal and political alliance between Mayor de Blasio and McCray. The couple is so close that his staff jokingly calls her his “Mophie” after the iPhone case that envelops the phone. McCray has told staffers jokingly that she would love matching bracelets that would beep when she or her husband needed one another.
“I think we’re both a mix of idealism and pragmatism,” McCray said. “Sometimes I bring him down to reality, and sometimes he brings me back to reality.” She helped handpick de Blasio’s top appointees, repeatedly reminding her husband that he had to have a diverse staff that reflected the demographics of the city. Now of the dozen senior staffers he meets with daily, only three are white men.
But despite her new role in the inner circle of municipal government, McCray still strongly identifies with her younger self — an activist who moved to the city with $35 in her pocket.
She said the city has grown “less open and welcoming” than it was in the 60s and 70s.
But she thinks things might be changing.
“I think there’s something happening. I think things go in cycles, and it’s been a long period of quiet,” she said.
“I think it’s time again.”
