Who Am I?

It's a good day for one from the archive! I woke up excited today because I was going to attend a writing group meeting. It felt odd to get a sitter in the middle of the day for something that I enjoy doing. While it may have felt indulgent, I also felt that I was taking a new step towards something that I value and who I would like to be in my life.  This year, I'll have two kids in school and one at home. It's amazing how something that seemed so far off is now imminent. I am soon going to be re-learning who I am without my kids always determining my agenda. It's exciting and it's scary. I am also sad to be closing a door to that stage of our lives. I really have enjoyed my kids and they have taught me some amazing things about myself. Here's one from the days when I thought that this time would never come:

 Who Is Mom?

Driving through traffic, I felt unattractive, melted from the heat, mentally exhausted from a screaming toddler cutting teeth, a bit haggard from my day. When I looked to the car on my right, I saw a beautiful early twenties girl puffing on a cigar to light it. She looked shocked and surprised that she got caught. It was as though she was trying to be inconspicuous and didn’t wish to be discovered. 

As the light changed to green, I laughed and revisited an old friend of mine. That person that used to be beautiful, thin, fun, reckless, worried about what I was doing, how everyone else saw me. I used to wear bikinis, be adventurous, always going out to the lake on those classic sunny days after work. 

Now, I feel more “wreck-less”. My definition of that would be going out looking like a tired housewife, enjoying the adult noise at a local hangout, nursing my drink and sitting at my table alone. I sit, scribbling notes on an actual notepad, not a laptop, but on paper with a pen. In total peace, I sit alone. 

The scene is foreign. In the middle of the loud happy hour, I relax without someone crying, holding onto my legs, and screaming “Mooooooooom!!!!” Often, I complain of being alone all of the time at home with toddlers. I have few friends who are around to stave off the absolute insanity that makes up the life of the “stay-at-home-mom-without-a-vehicle”. While I would still feel completely lonely at the park surrounded by toddlers and other moms who have lives outside of their home, I feel more secure, by myself, in the restaurant. 

I often envy the time that my husband gets to be out of the house by his self in the middle of adult chatter. I love his company; but when you are “abandoned at sea” on your own little “island” called home without a way to connect to the real world, idle adult chatter seems so valuable in comparison to singing along, mentally, to the tunes of your children’s shows or gardening while trying to shut out the sound of your beautiful child that is screaming outside of the garden fence. 

When trying to present this constant state of solitary to my significant other, I am often confronted with the idyll that I am at home, doing nothing. I am informed that it is like having a continual day off. That, in and of itself, is a gross misrepresentation of a stay at home parent. Who writes this book of “What Husbands Know Moms Do When They Are Home?” Is this what they remember of their parent that stayed home with them?

After my first child, I did go back to work, because it is what I had to do. I had two fantastic people who took care of my precious baby the way that I knew that I would do it. After we had two children, the daycare costs outweighed the benefits of going to work. 

The romanticized view of the spouse that is at home is deranged. Yes, it is wonderful to be able to raise your own child or children. However, has anyone asked the people that provide daycare, or the teachers, that devote their lives to raising other peoples’ children, how it is? Even teachers get breaks without children.  They receive camaraderie from other teachers. Where are the other stay-at-home moms, those who are not activity-driven?  The ones who scrub their walls frequently and clean their carpets, because they cannot function without a clean home? Do they go back to work? Because, I know, before my surprise child, that I would have loved to have gone back to work, if it wasn’t for that never-ending quarry: “If I don’t do my job, is someone else going to do it as well as I would?”. 

As I became a stay at home mom, I began to miss being someone. My opinion used to matter. Who I was, used to be important. My kids do not realize that I was not mom, before I was a mom. I didn’t know that my mom was someone until her job required more of her than her adult children. It was her time to be someone once again; not just when we kids wanted her to be mom. Parents, when their children grow and fly the coop, start to remember who they were, realize who they are and what their experiences have shaped them into. 

One day, I will be disappointed that my children do not need me as much as they used to. I will have to, once more, find out who I am, outside of the ones that I created, with the husband that I love. When I get to that point, there will be every other mom whose kids grew up with mine, trying to figure out how to live their lives again as well. 

Some will have an education; the other few, will still be that mom, who everyone loved. She was and probably still is, there for everything. She will be the one that arrived with cupcakes for all those special occasions. She had her kids in soccer, t-ball and swim lessons. Then, there will be the other one, the lone soul that always forged her path alone. She was always trying to figure out who she was the whole time through, always searching for her destiny, and comparing herself to everyone else. Never realizing that the whole time she was doing it, she was living it, by sharing her example.