I am drawn like a moth-to-the-flame to successful, driven people. They fascinate me. Uber-disciplined CEOs, scientists, corporate career women, renowned software developers, athletes…this is my inner circle of closest friends. They all wake up, setting the world on fire with their ideas and work ethic, and then manage to have families, stay in shape and maintain friendships.
I am…how shall we say… a combination of hippie, highly opinionated French woman, and rough outdoorsman. Picture flower-child meets Annie Oakley meets Marion Cotillard, and they have a love child who is a whiskey connoisseur. I can be found reading poetry and listening to French music in the mornings, hauling a load of hay and shoveling a corral of horse manure in the afternoons, and dancing at a hip hop class in the evenings. I write. I ride horses. I cook gourmet food, a lot. In short, I do whatever strikes my fancy with great joie de vivre. I despise schedules and striving.
Mostly, though, I’m a mom. A teacher by trade, it seemed natural to choose to stay at home and raise our 5 daughters, putting any career aspirations aside. Twenty years into the decision, I’ve never regretted my choice. Though life can seem an endless circle of laundry, lunchboxes, school meetings, and homework, I take so much joy and pride in the children I’m raising and the wonderful humans they are becoming.
Every once in a while, though, I wonder if I’ve reached my potential. Whether it’s a remark made by one of my kids that indicates their view that I’m “just a mom,” or people teasing that I’m spoiled and have a cushy life, it makes me think that maybe I’ve blown this “life” thing. I try to keep learning, expand my mind, and challenge myself, but I don’t have a career. In the way of personal triumph, I don’t have much to show for all of the fun I’ve been having over the last two decades.
So I begin to research graduate programs and order a GRE prep book. I convince myself that I’m going to finally get that master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and MAKE something of myself. I’m going to show my daughters that they can have a career AND a family.
This quickly denigrates into questions about who is going to finish raising these girls in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed? Listen to their stories? Pick them up at the bus stop? Give them guidance? Drive them to theatre? Set up tutoring? If I am an intern as a therapist, most of my nights will be in a clinic. The last few years that my teenage girls are with us will be lost to me, forever. I quickly close the book and get back to mothering.
I know that I have a charmed life. I don’t know many women who get to be “just moms” like me. My husband often says that my “job” is being the best “me” I can be – to enjoy and enrich my life, and in the process, all of theirs. My fascination with reading, writing poetry, cooking, dancing, finding new adventures, enhancing relationships…this is my career. It’s a fun life, to be sure. But it is not one without a lot of doubt and wondering if I’ve walked the right path.
You absolutely made the right decision and are very accomplished in your field of expertise as a mom! I had a fantastic life as a military man and rose through the ranks quickly in my chosen field. I had a great career as corporate man with steady up the ladder progress. BUT, I gave it all up to be there for my son. You see, all the accomplishments in the world are for naught if you set adrift a child and they are lost without the anchor called “mom” or “dad”. You are creating, molding and putting the finishing touches (for the first 18) of their young lives and then you let them set their sails and make their own course corrections with your guidance and things learned from you and the family culture. Rest easy Deb and put away those doubts. For it is the proverbial “grass is greener” phenomenon. You live in a far richer world than any amount of careerism or ladder climbing can bring.
What a lovely comment, John. Thank you for your encouragement!!
“Every once in a while I wonder if I have reached my potential”… If your potential is to foster the potential in 6 fascinatingly different human beings while fostering your own potential as a complicated and multifaceted diamond while fostering friendships and relationships most people would envy while fostering a home filled with crazy and wonderful animals (human as well as non-human (sorry Compass!))… Then my darling, I would say you are well on your way to reaching the most worthy of potentials as anyone could ever dream of!!! If I could do things over (and it would work out) I would have delayed my working years until all of you girls were out of school at the very least!! I don’t regret my times learning and doing at work, don’t regret my ladder that took me into nursing, but the time I DIDNT spend with you guys at home will be something I carry in my tears till the day I pass from the earth!! I know you wonder. That’s natural. But I, for one, can think of NOTHING more nobel and perfect for anyone to fill their potential than to help others fill their own potential while getting to while away the hours shoveling horse manure and writing poetry! Lol! You ROCK my girl!!!!
I just saw this. Thank you, mom!