A few nights ago I went with my husband to a cooking class. Without our baby. Without other people we were meeting because they have babies. It was just normal people, you know, as normal as a cooking class in Chelsea can be.
Anyhow, as in any grown up activity in which conversation and small talk are essential, the question arouse, The Question: “So, what do you do?”
I have always found it an odd query, one I have come accustomed to in this city. It is as common as talking about the weather, the Super Bowl ads or the weather. I have always been unsure if the doing of something, the activity you are engaged with most of your day defines you as a person, gives enough information to the person in front of you to begin the slow and quiet judgment of your person, or if its simply the easiest way to find commonalities and avoid the uncomfortable silence between two strangers.
That night the question appeared like a ghost from the baby-less past.
And without thinking much I responded “I’m a stay at home mom…” and quickly added, as if I needed to apologize for the past words “I am also a writer and am working on my PhD dissertation…”
Both assertions are true. I do stay at home with my baby, although we also go out as much as possible, to classes, for walks, to avoid cabin fever, etc. I am also trying to slowly get into my academic work (eradicating, as sluggish as an ant with a kilo on it’s back, the mommy brain that transformed my thinking).
Both assertions are true and yet I felt ashamed. Maybe shame is too strong a word, but it is close to what I felt. Let me try to explain the wordless feeling.
I felt insecure because I am not out in the adult world doing things, I felt apprehensive because I am not making any money. I felt odd to say I stay at home all day as if I don’t do anything at home but eat bonbons. I felt judged (even though I saw no judgment on faces, I saw more of a puzzlement, like all people without children have when they hear you devote your whole day to a tiny tyrant). Was it me who was judging? Was I judging myself because I never thought I would be in this position, especially willingly?
Why did saying those words out loud make me question everything I have been doing for the past five months? Were the words a way of stating facts I had internally acknowledged but hadn’t exactly mastered in the outside baby-less world?
Is it because I used to judge women like me before I understood?
I did judge, because, hey, why would you stop being what you are, why would you stop your career, your job, everything for a baby. We are not in the 50s anymore. Why would you have to give up anything for anything, including motherhood?
My feminist being, the one who fought for freedom and to be treated as equally as my brothers, the one who went further and fought harder to be able to make my own life choices did not understand. That feminist being that resides in me with clenched fists, waiting for the next fight, was unable to wrap itself around the fact that a woman who was staying at home to raise her children was not a loser. She was not giving up on every liberty she had gained, nor her career. A woman who is all day with her kids hasn’t given herself up. Nor given up being an adult.
A woman who decides to stay home with her children can be as fulfilled as a woman who goes to an office every day. Why was this so hard to understand?
How could I have been so judgy and blind?
I am a full time mom, a stay at home mom, the director of logistics and VP of activities at Danielle Olivia enterprises (my baby is the CEO, of course). And to say it out loud was also liberating, because it’s true. Because I am lucky enough to do it because I want to. I am lucky enough to be able to do it.
It is hard to say out loud because most people who have never spent more than a few hours with a baby don’t understand how much work it is, how tired we end up, how going to the bathroom, taking a shower and eating are a luxury.
Most people who have never done it don’t know how exhausting it is, nor how fulfilling.
Next time I am asked “What do you do?” I won’t feel shame nor be at a loss for words.
I know exactly what I am doing and why.