Just a Mom

For some reason, I've felt uncomfortable about saying I'm a stay-at-home mom since the day I decided not to go back to work. When people asked, "What do you do?", how would I answer?

As a grade-school kid, I had a couple of friends whose moms stayed at home. There was one friend, whose mom was our Blue Bird Leader. And another, whose mom played a lot of tennis. And still another friend, well, I'm not sure what her mom did aside from smoke cigarettes and clean her already immaculate house. But none of those girls lived in my neighborhood. They were, it seemed, in a different league. They had neighborhood pools, rode their bikes to school and rode the bus only on school field trips, enjoying it for the novelty it would be if you weren't harassed on it daily by the boys on the block.

I don't remember a time when my mom didn't work. She went to nursing school and worked a variety of jobs when I was just starting school. Then, to pay back her school debt, she worked the night shift at Mercy Hospital, leaving my dad in charge of getting my sister and I out the door in the mornings. Her schedule eventually changed, and she went to work with most of the rest of the world, during the day.

Staying at home seemed foreign to me. I thought most of us in the middle would naturally go back to work. Stay-at-home moms, I thought, were sandwiched on the other ends of the socio-economic ladder -- those who had children young, had little education and couldn't climb out of a cycle their families are wedded to and then those who've never worried about paying the mortgage or buying designer clothes for their kids.

So I struggle to understand where I fit in. My family lives fairly comfortably. But we do worry about paying our bills, especially in light of recent news of more pay cuts and layoffs at Seth's work. I haven't bought myself one piece of clothing that came from anywhere nicer than Target in more than a year. I'd love to grocery shop exclusively organic, especially meats, but I know that would more than double our food costs. And Jasper is outfitted in mostly gifted, hand-me-down or consignment shop clothes.

This isn't a pity party, though. I feel damn lucky that we can afford for me to stay at home with Jasper. I tell people that if I'd been in love with my career, it might have been different. But I don't know if that's true. It would have been hard for me to handle a job and be the one responsible for getting Jasper to and from childcare, doctor's appointments, stay at home with him when he's sick and still put dinner on the table. We have no family in town, and Seth's schedule leaves me wondering at times if I'd see him more if he were a doctor.

I spend a few dreamy moments a day getting excited thinking of ways I could fit "work" into my life. Maybe I could get paid to write. Maybe someone will stumble upon me online and give me the book deal of the century. Or maybe I could be a cooking coach and help families learn to shop and cook for themselves.

Usually my thoughts are interrupted by a crash of blocks hitting the wood floors, or the now rote "no-no" I say when Jasper climbs onto the dishwasher door. Have stay-at-home moms always had dreams about what else they could do? I mean seriously, I know the 1960s feminism happened, Betty Friedan and Affirmative Action, but wasn't it mostly the daughters of stay-at-home moms wanting to buck the trend? I'm happy for their efforts; it gives us a choice. In college I had a women's history professor in college who predicted that not too far in the future we'd see the stay-at-home-mom model revived much like the 1950s. Everything, she said, comes back around.

I'm still searching for my right to this lifestyle.

In that vain, I made myself a business card. It helps validate my other blog, which I need to get more people to come see what I write there. Plus, it's just kinda fun. Reminds me of when I was a cub reporter and felt so proud to hand my card to a small-town county commissioner or sheriff.

I never really had an answer to that question everyone asks kids: What do you want to be when you grow up? I was great at dreaming -- actress, equestrian, Saturday Night Live writer, and, of course, my ambition at 15 to be a performer in a water ski show. Maybe, I thought, if I let myself percolate long enough, something greater than I could imagine would surface. A dream I'd never even thought of, a job I'd never really considered. Then college came around and I had to stop dreaming and get serious.

I am a mom. It's a job, no doubt, but I'm still left feeling a little sheepish about it. That must be why I keep volunteering for things, leaving myself frazzled at the load I pile up for myself.

I need to start believing that I have realized my potential. Sure, I can always grow and become something more, but, where I'm at right now, isn't a bad place to start.