Is The Grass Really Greener on The Other Side?

Ok, since I translate my life into motherhood here's another lesson I'd like to teach my kids and since my love of words and metaphors is overwhelming me right now I just have to go with it: If you think the grass is always greener on the other side, it's because you've stopped tending your own lawn.  You will always think that someone has something bigger and better than what you have and the bottom line is if you want to really be happy in life than stop envying what others have and focus on what you have. 

Here's what I've learned in my 30 years so far.  When you start paying so close attention to what others have you start measuring and translating your life and your happiness in terms of what it is not.  Does anyone ever find happiness by trying to gage what one does not have that others do? 

I can honestly say that my life has not been a bed of roses.  I've been through some dark and trying times, but I'd like to think that I have learned how to see through these periods in life to the brighter side that lies beyond.  At some point, I hope my children do as I did and ask themselves this key question - What is it that I truly need to make me happy?  I hope they think long and hard about this question.  I hope to be the buzzer that sounds in their head if what comes to mind is a possession or a dollar amount.  If this is what jumps to their minds, then unfortunately the grass will always be greener on the other side.  There will always be someone whose possessions and income are more enviable. 

Three years ago, I was an individual.  The only person I had to dream for was me.  Now I'm a mom.  If you don't have kids, I'm not sure you understand what it means to have your whole life change in ways you never expected.  It made me really re-evaluate what I wanted out of life.  I don't know if I really wanted to move up the corporate ladder, rub shoulders with those in positions I coveted and make allies among the other "young professionals" whose goals were the same.  Every time I get approached by these "young professional" organizations now to join and participate in whatever "career development" program they're offering I kind of smile inside.  It's not because I don't agree with what they are doing.  It's because they don't see it in me.  Sometimes I think everything about me is so clear.  I'm the living cliche of someone who wears their heart on their sleeve so I sometimes forget that not everything I am is so transparent.

I'm a mom I tell them.  Then I get this blank stare.  I say this by way of explanation, as in I don't have time for extra curricular activities.  I have a job and I have a family so that leaves um virtually no time for anything else.  At this juncture in my life, I don't know if I will ever want to be on the career development, upwardly mobile path.  I know that's what people think I'm supposed to want.  But that's where my handy dandy philosophy comes in, I CHOOSE what I want and three years ago I CHOSE to become a mom.  After I lost my first baby, I realized that it's a choice people sometimes take for granted.  As if it is always there; an easy option that will be waiting for them whenever they decide the time is right.  I'm not saying its a bad thing to be career oriented, to be ambitious, but I would just like to make sure that my children stop, take a second and ask themselves "What is it that I need to make me happy?"

I have asked myself this question on several occasions.  The answer keeps coming back the same.  I need my family to make me happy.  When my daughter was born, I couldn't bare the thought of leaving her in daycare and then I got a call that would actually start me on a new path.  It was my grandmother who inadvertently and painfully reminded me of the many more options I have in my life than she did.  So I sat down and asked the question and thus hatched my job share plan.  I work part-time now and yes my bank account is pretty sad on any given day and yes I haven't had my hair cut in at least six months, but I have seen my kids first steps, heard their first words, and even on days where the temper tantrums of my three-year-old infuriate me and my son is being so needy that I can't get a square inch of air to call my own, I don't feel anything but happiness when I think of my life.  I have what I need and that makes me happy.  Would I like to go on a fancy vacation this year, buy a bigger house, have more money in my bank account?  ABSOLUTELY.  But I know that I am NOT willing to have time with my family be the sacrifice I make for it.  That is just me.  That was the answer to my question.  I hope they know that they, along with my husband, are what I need to be happy.

I hope that one day they know that the grass is only greener on the other side if you've stopped tending your own lawn.  So Hannah and Jayden if you read this one day, do your mom a favor.  After you've thought long and hard about what you need to make you happy, get up and go get it.  You will be amazed, trust me, at how very possible your dreams are. 

Will Work For Daycare

Today a very clear and distinct vision of my life came into comical view.  I stand on the side of the road with a dirty rough cut piece of cardboard in my hands with the words WILL WORK FOR DAYCARE written in magic marker.  (Side note: Anyone have any idea what is so magical about a magic marker?  Will I get what I write as long as it's written in magic marker?  Totally wish that were the case.)  So in my vision I am like that jobless person who stands by the side of the road, desperate for work, so desperate they will work for food.  There is something especially captivating about these people.  They don't ask for handouts; they ask for help and it's really hard not to really SEE them.  So too am I, standing on the side of my career path if you will, asking for help - WILL WORK FOR DAYCARE.

Since my mother is currently in the hospital with a broken ankle, I'm left in limbo with childcare.  I work part-time (3 days a week) so you'd think that there would be some monetary break for less than full-time childcare.  But I have not ONE but TWO children. Here is where the real exponential cost of having more than one child comes into play.  The cost of one more plate at the table, the cost of one more pack of diapers, an additional toy, none of them really level your budget like the cost of daycare.  For the first time since I was pregnant with my three-year-old daughter, I've starting pricing out daycare.  I'm hoping my need for it is for the next month to three months while my mom recovers.

I priced out a local daycare center, you know the kind, full of amenities like feeding your child, reading, singing, playing, changing them (the things moms do automatically, for free, but perhaps without the formal agenda).  It would cost me, not one of my two monthly paychecks, but basically one and a half of them.  After the cost of gas, I would be left working to pay for my children to be cared for by strangers.  Sigh....  So I thought, let's ask anyone who might know anyone who might be able to watch them in their home.  So I talked to a stay-at-home mome who watches children in her home. Yes, it's a decidedly cheaper option, but still regretably expensive when you consider my budget for childcare was $0 and there is really no extra money in sight.  Believe me (and if you don't just ask one of my friends) I am one of the most frugal people on Earth. 

I don't know for the life of me how working families pay for childcare these days.  I understand how important it is to have someone you trust caring for your children when you're not around, ESPECIALLY if you have ones far too little to tell you if something bad happened or they were ignored or...let's step off that bad path at the turn here.  I get it, but I also know from working in a daycare for my whopping two days (yes it was that stressful and oh yes I was already getting a fresh cold) that you pay people WAY TOO LITTLE money and put them in a room filled with more children then they can responsibly care for and even the caregiver with the best of intentions can't care for your children the way they would like to.

It's so beyond frustrating.  I keep thinking, this is NOT what I signed up for when I had children.  When I hatched my brilliant job-share plan, I did it with the belief that a stranger would not be raising my child.  I would raise my children and my mother who loves them would care for them, if not exactly like I would than equally as well.  So for now, they are being looked after by other family members for as long as my welcome and wallet aren't worn out.  I'm grateful for the help, but I am woefully worn out from stressing about money and childcare and work.  I realize there are a lot more women with less resources and options than myself and I wonder how they do it.  For weeks I have felt frustration, shame, failure, and guilt.  I go to my job and my day is punctuated with moments of utter sadness.  I know I'm rowing against a current I cannot possibly overtake.

In college, when things got bad I came up with my very first Erinism as I now call my quotes, my snippets of life philosophy.  It was meant to keep me going when I wanted to give up.  I wrote it down and hung it on my wall.  "It's a hard lesson to learn that sometimes your best is not good enough, and a harder lesson to keep going when it's not."  I guess it's about that time to write it down once again and hang it, preferably at height level, where I might be inclined to bang my head if it weren't there offering me a more positive option.

The Mommy Track

Work and Motherhood should be synonymous, but for some odd reason they are not.  When talking about outside paid employment, motherhood is viewed as sort of a detour on the road to career advancement - a maternity leave during which you bond with your baby then promptly enroll them in daycare and mother them on nights and weekends.  Well that is the way it used to be thought of anyway.

It's so rare to find a stay at home mom these days.  They are going extinct at a rapid rate.  Society tells us that we simply cannot afford to care for our children "full-time" and besides women are independent and career oriented and should want to reach for the brass ring with the same zeal as our husbands.  But what happens when you trade in the brass ring, for dare I say it, a teething ring?

When I was pregnant with my daughter I expected to return to work full-time and enroll her in daycare, as most moms now do.  I was totally fine as long as I operated under the assumption that I simply had no other choice in the matter.  I was fine with my assumption oh until about three days after my daughter was born.  I called my grandmother to tell her the good news and she asked me if I was going to return to work. When I said yes, she asked me, "but why you wanted that baby so much?"  That is one of the few moments I can point to in my life and say see this is where it all changed.  She wasn't saying it to be mean or criticize my choice, she simply saw choices that I did not.

She was an immigrant to this country from war-torn Germany.  She raised three kids alone for the better part of their childhood.  She worked damn hard on farms, in factories, and for wages that may have made my first job after college look like I had made it to "the good life."  Work was life for my grandmother.  Motherhood was life too and the two things were not in fact separate ideas.  I did a paper for college about her work history and in every answer to my questions about work, she infused paid work with family work.  Without knowing it, she was saying that for women, the realm of work is not one thing, paid employment or work in the home, it's both simultaneously.

So after crying for weeks about a question I hadn't expected to shake me to my core, I started thinking about what would really make me happy.  I talked with my husband, then my mom, then finally my boss.  I did something up until this very moment in my life I found so very daunting, I asked for what I needed to make me happy.  I wanted to work part-time so I could spend time with my child and still contribute financially to my household.  I arranged with my boss to turn my full-time job into a job-share so that I could work part-time.  My mom agreed to watch my child (and later my two children) while I was at work.  And as a happy consequence I made a great friend in the co-worker and mother who was able to work the other part of my job. 

I was lucky that it worked out.  I have been happy and now all my stitching of my ideal life is starting to slowly unravel one stitch at a time.  All the knots that hold together my work/motherhood life are coming undone. 

My job is undergoing a major transition and there is a possibility I could be laid off.  My mother broke her foot and is in the hospital and afterwards will need months of rehabilitation and help herself.  It's like I'm back to that very moment when my grandmother questioned what I was going to do about work and motherhood.  The difference is, she recently passed away and she can not ask, so I guess I have to ask myself again - What's it going to take to make me happy?

I look for jobs online that require me to work full-time.  I think of how much more we would struggle if I stayed at home.  I look at my children and think of what it took to bring them into this world.  I know now, thanks to my grandmother, that I do in fact have choices, but she never said they would be easy ones to make.  I can think of just one thing that would make me happy.  Just one.  Again it hinges on the cooperation of others, it hinges on timing, it hinges on a future that I can not see or touch in this moment in time and like anyone else would be, I'm scared.  So I cling to today.  I take help when it is offered and say thank you instead of struggling in silence.  I try to think of getting through today and tomorrow and try not to assume anything more about the future than that. 

There is an old saying that if you have a job or a career and choose any other path besides full-time employment or choose to leave at the end of the day instead of living for your job, you are in fact on the "mommy track."  It's a term that was meant to put down women who choose to stand up and say that my family is just as important as my job.  I even had a professor in college who tried to discourage me when I told him I didn't plan to go on to grad school by saying, "What are you going to do then, stay home and have babies?" 

I was in my early twenties and didn't have a voice then.  But I do now.  I'm proud to be on the "mommy track."  Not everyone gets the privilege to be a mother.  But I will be blessed the rest of my life.  So while others are pushing their career up the track of success one piece of paper and project at a time, I take the track that meanders, that takes the short hill instead of the mountain.  I enjoy the view of my life as it sprawls out before me.  I know how this goes; this track is just a different segment of the same roller coaster. The difference is, I fill my car with my family and my hopes for them, not just myself.  It goes slower because there is more to pull.  It takes the hill over the mountain because what is an exhilarating rush of adrenaline to some, to others is just a rush of fear.  I don't know what's going to happen next any more than the next person, but I know one thing that perhaps others may not.  I choose to define success on my terms and I know I have more power than even I realize.  I can only hope that other women know that too.

Motherhood The New Career!

I have decided that we ought to be paid to be mothers. We work from sun up to sun down and even in our sleep we hear phantom babies/children crying or simply calling for us. Even the woman, like me, who can sleep through most anything will wake up at the smallest muffled cry when she has children. I can't tell you how many times I've been in the shower and heard my son or daughter cry for me only to realize that in fact it was perfectly quiet and they are both still tucked in and sleeping peacefully. What I'm getting at is that motherhood doesn't shut off, even in our unconsciousness.

If you work "outside the home" and you're a mother then you really work two full time jobs. In my case one and a half. Since I work "outside the home" part time you can count that as my half a job. I hate that 1950s term "outside the home." Work is NOT a place; it's a state of being. It's a to do list that never ends, replenishing itself the second one item gets crossed off. That is motherhood -WORK.

Even if a person LOVES their job. At the end of the day it's still a JOB. So if you have a CAREER is it different? Is the To Do List outlined in glitter? Do you skip to work? Do you hum while doing menial tasks like filing papers, typing notes or sitting in a marathon of meetings? My guess would be a big fat NO, but then again I have a JOB. What that means is that I work for the paycheck, the occassional pat on the head if it's offered and the chance to keep my brain from turning into baby mush. I often wonder if I would forget how to speak "Adult" if I were home by myself with my kids all day. I like my JOB, but I know there is no UP; there is nothing to work toward in terms of advancement. Is that a CAREER? Wanting to move up toward something better, towards a position more full of responsibility and one hopes pay??

Is a CAREER a calling, a strong desire to do something you would do even if money were no object? Is a CAREER the willingness to step into a role (sometimes knowing that you will need to grow into that role) that is more responsibility and one hopes more rewarding as well. If that is the case, then why the hell is MOTHERHOOD not a CAREER? It's perfectly clear to me that we do it, the never ending to do list that is motherhood, with money being no object because it doesn't pay a dime. I happen to think the world would be a lot better place if it were a CAREER. There would be a hell of lot less war, crime, greed, and corruption.

It would be great to get paid for all the work I actually do. I am shaping a future generation and I do it while balancing a bank account that is always teetering on the edge of empty. That means that I'm constantly balancing many other things as well- my marriage, my children, my home, and my job. My responsibilities are hovering around me every second of the day. I'm proud to be able to contribute to my family's income, but I know that if I lost that income I could not afford to stay home and simply raise my kids. So it absolutely sucks on those days when my life and my responsibilites to all those that I love feels like a JOB. If MOTHERHOOD was given the proper respect it deserves, and if it paid just half of the amount good parenting would save our society in punishment of crime, then it would definitely be a CAREER.