Stay At Home Mom

Ok..This is a from a past newsletter also....5 years ago. So I've moved and moved back...and now have been married twenty years. I'm no longer making toothpick art projects with my kids...just writing checks!....enjoy young moms.


I'm at that point in my life where I am having a hard time defining myself. I can easily say that I am a mother, I have the stretch marks to prove it. I can also say that I am a wife. I am someones daughter and someones sister. But for some reason I feel like I am lacking some better describable attributes.

I dread walking into a party and being asked by the PHD holding, mother of two (boy and girl of course) blonde, toned, beautiful working mother "So, what do you do?"
Now I don't hold anything against this woman, its a reasonable question to ask someone to begin a little small talk. But finding the answer to this question quick enough not to let her see the panic that's raging through me is the dilemma.

"I stay home with my kids" That just seems like a lame, un-descriptive answer.
"I stay at home and make sure that the cat litter box is cleaned and if my kids are sick, I can get to them and school and back home in two minutes"....Ok, that just sounds pitiful.
"I make sure that the telemarketers have someone to talk to between the hours of nine and five" Ok..its just getting worse.

When my husband and I first got married almost fifteen (now twenty) years ago, you didn't see as many stay at home moms as you do these days. We got pregnant with our first daughter when I was only twenty years old, six months after we got married and at that time we decided that when she was born I would stay home. This wasn't the easiest thing to accomplish. There were alot of sacrifices that were made for making that decision. He worked a full-time job, went to school at night and on top of that built fences on the weekends. But this was the decision that we had made.

So for almost fifteen years, while various friends have gotten their college degrees and have moved up the corporate ladder, Ive been moving. Moving from and apartment to a rental house. At the birth of our second daughter, we moved then to our first home. After the birth of our third daughter we soon moved into a larger home, and then eventually to a new city and a new job. And then again, to yet another city.

I dig through backpacks and make houses out of toothpicks. I try to make my yard beautiful and I take the trash out. I do funerals for goldfish, and babysit baby dolls while my youngest daughter is at school. I carpool to volleyball and soccer and coach my two youngest daughters cheer leading teams. I explain why the bird is gone and the cat has gotten fatter. I wipe tears when they come home, and say sorry when I'm the one who causes them.

I only wish there was a universal definition of a stay at home mom. If I could only say those words and see the amazement in someones eyes. If I could only say those words and not feel like I am in some way inferior to those women who do not. I have a lot of respect for women who work. My own mother worked and is still working. I don't think I was damaged in any way because she did. But, it just seems that there is so much more glamour associated with woman who do both. They are both breadwinners and caretakers.

The funny thing is that these women who I am trying to make small talk with probably want to be exactly where I am. Maybe they work because they love what they do, or maybe because they have to. I don't know if they hire caretakers for their children when they have to stay home from school sick, and don't think twice about it. Or if they are counting the minutes till they get home because they had no choice.

One of these days when my kids are grown and gone, maybe I'll wish that I had a career to fall back on. Maybe I will second guess my decision to be "old fashioned" and stay home.
Maybe the women I attempt to make small talk with will wish they could have had more time to sew on brownie patches and drive carpools.
Or maybe we'll all be in exactly the same place then. Watching our children walk out into the world knowing that the decision we made was just the right one. That whichever path we had chosen had influenced our children in just the right way.

So next time I'm in a situation that requires me to answer the question "So what do you do?" I think my answer will be.

"I stay home with my kids" my palms may sweat a little but I think in the long run I can live with that. If that's the worst thing that happens I think I'll be ok.

-----Five years later and one is on college, one in high school and one in eighth grade. I am no longer watching baby dolls and doing a car pool. I am beginning to reap the rewards of motherhood like all moms will do whether they stay home or not.
I watching grown women..or almost..find their way in the world and I have to say..It's a beautiful thing.