Writing and Mothering

I am often torn between describing myself as a stay-at-home Mom and as a writer. I am both. I identify with mothers who work outside the home, and I identify with those who work at home. I end up feeling like I don't really belong with either group and that neither would claim me.

1. When my kids were babies, I never put them down. Seriously, almost never. I sometimes put them in those little papooses of various kinds, but I often carried them in my arms. Cooking, cleaning, at church or in the grocery store, those babies were like monkeys hanging onto mama. I would sometimes read a book while pushing a child in a swing. I would go do workouts in the morning before they woke up. But I was there almost every moment and I believe strongly in the need for children to be with mama, not in a baby jail or in a bouncer or a car seat. It drives me crazy that I see so many parents trying to keep babies happy in a car seat. Pick that baby up, I want to say.

2. And yet--I also taught classes at the local university for four years while my oldest children were small. I had to deal with all of the problems of child care. I once ended up hearing that the husband of the woman I sent my kids to for a couple of hours a week had been arrested for abusing his wife physically. Imagine how great that made me feel. I did child care swaps with a friend. I asked my 70 year old mother to watch my kids while I taught school. I finally volunteered for all 8 am classes so my husband could stay with the kids until I rushed home at 9 and he could go off to work. I did this in part because I wanted to, because it was what I was trained for and I was proud of my education and my ability to work. I also did it because we were dirt poor and on WIC. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had to work, but I felt I did.

3. When I finally quit my job with the university and turned to writing, I had 5 kids. I used to have to squeeze in writing time during naps. I would make sure that the kids all went to sleep at the same time (by waking them up early, if necessary). When kids were too old for naps, I gave them rules for quiet time. I bought lots of videos for the kids to watch. Yup, the TV was the babysitter while I was in the next room. Call me a terrible Mom. I'll measure the success of my two oldest (now both graduating from high school and going off to college) against any Tiger Mom. I did home school with the kids in the summer and drilled them on math and corrected their grammar and drove them everywhere they needed to go.

4. With 5 kids all in school now, life has changed a lot. But some things haven't changed. I still work. There are still times when I can't go to family events because I'm committed to an evening signing or some other writerly event. There are times when I am on deadline and dinner is Campbell's soup and some bread that Dad brings home from work. There are people who act as if I have no work to do, and that annoys me. I can't volunteer for things at school because if I did that, I would have no time for my writing. And yet, am I looking down my nose at people who do have time for that? I don't know.

In the end, I fall back on something I find more and more true. We must listen to people when they tell us what they want with their lives. We must trust them that they will do what is right for them, and that what is right for us isn't right for them. We must accept that other people have different realities than our own. We must validate others for the work they do, even if it isn't work we choose to do.

I don't vacuum much. I don't dust often. I have dishes sitting on top of the dishwasher every moment of my life. I sometimes wish that I didn't, but I know that it's my choice. And it's all right for me to make that choice.