cacophony

What the fuck does that mean?

Stay-at-home-mom. Women have gone through this “evolution” of what they want to be called when they don’t work outside the home (god help you if you say they “don’t work”). Once upon a time, we were called housewives. At some point, we became homemakers. Now we are SAHMs. We even get our own acronym. If you spend much time in the internet mommy world (on mommy blogs, forums, etc) you’ll find all mothers have acronyms attached to them — WOHM, WAHM, SAHM. Everybody’s got a little box to jump into.

The idea behind the current term is that we don’t stay home in order to cook, clean, or otherwise do “house” stuff — we stay home to mother our children, and that is what the focus should be on when we describe what we do. So the phrase “stay-at-home-mom” was coined.

You’d think this would be simple. It’s just a phrase, right? But I have seen so much ugliness over this issue. Some mothers don’t like SAHM because “well, that implies we stay home all day, and we don’t — we’re usually out doing interesting stuff.” Some call themselves “full-time mothers,” which of course offends the WOHMs (work outside the home mothers) because they, of course, are also the full time mothers of their children — it’s not as if someone else becomes “mom” while they are at work all day. I could go on and on and on about all the different “titles” that have been suggested, and all the criticisms of them.

The things I want to say about this issue are complex, and convoluted, and it may take me many, many tries before I can truly articulate them.

But. What does it come down to? Women — mothers, specifically — fighting among themselves about “who’s doing it better.” This is what the press knows as “The Mommy Wars” — and they are awful. Women already have enough problems on their plates. Why are we adding infighting among ourselves to the battles we need to wage?

Is it better for a child to have mom at home, all the time, rather than go to daycare? Is it better for children to have the role model of strong, independent women who work outside the home to emulate? How do you decide? Is what’s better for one the same as what’s better for another? Is it setting feminism back to have so many college-educated women choosing to opt out of the workforce? Does my individual decision to stay home with my child have a negative effect on society as a whole? Does it have a positive one?

And that doesn’t even touch the surface of the mommy wars. Where it gets really vicious is in the “I have it harder than you do” battle, the “I’m a better mother than you are because I’m willing to make the sacrifices for my child” rhetoric. All of which, to be perfectly honest, makes me want to vomit. I’ve done both. I’ve been a WOHM and now I’m a SAHM. Without a single doubt, being a WOHM was harder for me day-to-day, and caused significantly more guilt on my part. Without a single doubt, my being a SAHM is harder for my child, and harder for me in a long term sense. But that’s ME, and MY family. I would never presume to judge for another family which way would be harder, or best, for them.

Some of the things I’ve heard from other women are stunning in their venom. As a WOHM, I heard “Why did you have children if you were going to let someone else raise them?” “How does it feel not to be the primary caregiver for your child?” “How can you call yourself an attached parent when you spend so much time away from your child?” “You know, your child doesn’t really THRIVE in daycare, you just tell yourself that so that you feel good about leaving him. I understand that sometimes we have no choice, but don’t fool yourself that daycare is really BETTER for him.” “I really miss working outside the home, but I care enough about my kids to give it up for them.” “It must be nice to have that break from your kids, to go to work so you can get some rest.” ” Being a SAHM is so much harder than working.” As a SAHM, I’ve heard “So how does your child get any stimulation during the day?” “It must be nice not to have to DO anything all day.” “Aren’t you concerned that he’s growing up seeing that you don’t have anything of value to offer society?” “Being a WOHM is so much harder than staying at home.”

It’s never ending. And watching it play out in my life, in the lives of so many women I know, just makes me sad.

Here’s the truth as I know it: having a SAHM is NOT best for every child. No matter how much the “world” at large would like us to believe it, it is simply not true — and, moreover, I think the idea is something that a bunch of men came up with that does nothing but weaken women. This pisses a lot of women off, because they are living in poverty, making supreme sacrifices, going on welfare — so that their children can have a mom at home. They don’t want to hear that it might not be the best choice because having that SAHM is not the most important thing in a child’s life. But there are so, so many things that are just as important, that are more important. And EVERY mother has a hard job. And working outside the home does NOT make a person less of a mother, in any way.

I wish mothers would quit fighting amongst themselves. I wish we could unite to push for BETTER care for women and pregnancies, better care for babies, MORE choices for women.

Instead, we fight amongst ourselves.

Which, I think, means the people we SHOULD be fighting against have already won.

I tell people this all the time. I think it is the most important lesson we can learn in life — to do those things that feed us, sustain us, make us whole. Of course, I do not mean it in the literal sense — but in the spiritual (or emotional, if you’d rather) sense. We all have things that we do that “fill us up,” and I truly believe that the key to being happy, then, is to “do what feeds you.”

Why, then, do I have such a hard time doing it myself?

I know exactly what feeds me; what my passions are. Writing, photography, knitting, reading good books, bookmaking and other “paper arts” type pursuits — all these things fill me up to overflowing. Notice what they all (save reading) have in common?

They are creative. What feeds me is to create. I have this intense, driving need — ache — inside myself, that is larger than my body can hold and yearns to be set free, let out, in the creation of something. Anything. It’s as if I am, my self is, too large to be contained within the confines of my skin. So I have to bleed it off into creative endeavors.

But. But. I don’t. The actual amount of time I spend creating is so small, compared to the need I have for it, and it leaves me, almost always — discontent. Unsatisfied. Disappointed with myself. So. What holds me back? What keeps me from writing, from picking up the camera, from grabbing my knitting needles or sitting at a sewing machine or or or or . . . any of the dozens of things that might slake this thirst, lessen this need?

I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I only know that, in order to navigate this life I have, I must find a way to push past that inertia, to set free that “creative spirit.” Or it’s going to eat me alive.

Do what feeds you. Surely, surely, I can do that.

The kitchen table that lives in my house now is the same kitchen table that I grew up with, at least from the time I was a preteen. The brown one, with the carved-back chairs. I remember the kitchen table we had before that was black and very heavy — visually and physically. That’s the kitchen table I sat on, wrapped in a blanket eating grapes, while Mama was on the phone (I assume with the doctor) after I split my head wide open while riding the 3-wheeler with Daddy. But that big, black table is not the kitchen table that is sitting in my house right now. The table in my kitchen is oval (rather than rectangular) and brown (rather than black) and lighter than the black table could ever have imagined being.

I like the kitchen table that we have. I remember sitting around it as a faimly — and as a much extended family — for so many every night dinners, and so many holiday festivities. What I remember the most about being around that kitchen table is laughing. So many dinners where we were at the table forever — forever! — just laughing, even after the food was long gone, everyone long finished eating. I want that for my son. And I think — I really think — that he needs to have siblings for him to really experience that.

I remember folding load after load after LOAD of laundry at that table — until it was piled high with stacks of clothing. I remember — after the family dinners had, somehow, become more of a thing of the past than a thing of the present — those piles of clothes staying on the table for so long, and how somehow it aggravated me, made me angry. Only now do I realize that anger was because I was reminded that we didn’t have the laughing family dinners anymore.

I remember coloring maps that were spread out all over that table — trying to earn a little extra cash from Daddy. I remember doing homework projects there, and study groups, and tutoring. The nights I spent with the few friends I had, and many more acquaintances, crowded around that kitchen table trying to learn about English literature — and I remember laughing, again. Hours and hours of laughter.

And now that kitchen table sits in my house. It gets covered by a tablecloth — which never happened in my mother’s house — and sometimes it gets piled high with junk (though never laundry). And more and more often, as Nate gets older, it holds our family dinners — the three of us, together, sharing our meals, our days, and our lives.

This brings me a great feeling of contentment. I hope — though I know we will probably someday replace it with a new kitchen table — that Nate (and any siblings he ends up with) will have the same treasured memories that I have of the kitchen table.

So it was my birthday on Tuesday. I turned 31 years old.

I have a lot of thoughts in my head about birthdays. I don’t know that I’m going to, or even want to, get them all out.

I remember various birthdays over the years, some more than others. I remember the year that I spent in Pensacola for a weekend with a few good friends. I do not remember which birthday it was — I was young — before sixth grade, when I was still in Catholic school. That was a great birthday — sunburned, sweaty, sandy, and filled with a kind of joy that comes only with being a kid on the beach.

I remember my 18th birthday. Right before my birthday, I went away for a “party” with two of my closest friends in Oxford — our “last blast” before I went far away from them for college. I got drunk — oh so drunk — for the first time, the first time I’d ever had anything more to drink than half a wine cooler. Shot after shot after shot of Bacardi. Looking back, I’m pretty convinced I had alcohol poisoning to some degree. Not my smartest moment.

My actual birthday party, my parents ragged me mercilessly about it. I remember, more than anything else about that birthday, laughing. Gods, the laughing.

I remember my 21st birthday. It was the first birthday of mine that my husband and I were together. He was in school for the summer; I was working in Athens, Texas, living in a hotel room. I’d been saving money for soooo long for one thing — to go to the casinos on my birthday. Future hubby, my college roommate, and her boyfriend all made the trip back to Mississippi for that birthday — and we spent HOURS in the casinos. Everybody won that weekend but me, and I lost in a big way — and didn’t care. I remember that weekend only in bits and flashes — standing outside the Palace casino, listening to the oldies they had playing and singing, trying to get sww to dance with me. Leaning over the craps table, throwing the dice, laughing my ass off. Just the right level of deliciously drunk off of free booze, trying to direct a very sober sww back to my home:

“You’re going to take a right at the next red light.”
“That red light?”
“No, that’s not a red light, that’s a green light.”

I don’t remember what he said to me, but it was most likely said through clenched teeth. In my defense, the light in question was (in my mind) not a real traffic light, because it was on a bridge and only turned red when the bridge was up.

I do not think I made things better by pointing out, when we got to the light, “See, you can’t turn here, you’ll go in the water.”

Again, I don’t remember what the response was. That’s probably best.

. . . .

There were so many things I thought I would do by the time I was thirty — and so many of them undone. And now, at 31, I can’t pretend to myself anymore that they might still happen. I sometimes grieve for the life I thought I’d have — actually, if I’m being honest, lives. There were a lot of places I thought I might be by the time I was thirty; as it turns out, I’m in none of those places. And yet, I wouldn’t give up the life I DO have for anything in the world. That dissonance is — difficult sometimes. Particularly on birthdays.

Thirty is supposed to be a “milestone” year. And, looking back at 30, maybe it was — but not in the way I expected it to be. This year, for the most part, was difficult. Too much change to be comfortable, too much illness, too much . . . just too much. Everything.

But. But. Thirty is also the year I made the big jump — out of the classroom, home with my boy. In my mind, that’s the defining thing — the biggest thing that I did over the last year. And I think it makes the year — the changes, the loss of my mental/emotional balance — worth it. Oh so worth it.

. . . .

Hubby was out of town for this birthday, on a business trip. I did not see anyone all day long but my son. It was a bit lonely, moreso than I expected. But I had a lot of friends — in particular, one very good friend — and all my family who made sure that I knew I was in their thoughts, all day long. Not alone in spirit. All in all, it was a good day. I am looking forward to an even better year.