What Happened? Part Three

I've been thinking about Part Three of this story for weeks.  Finding so much I want to say and then wondering if everything I plan to write is lies, or at least a skewed way of thinking about things.  And I've been stymied about how to write this part of the story in a way that honors and respects my parents.  What is written below doesn't really convey the angst of this change in my life.  I still have days where I just don't know what happened.

My grandmother, my father's mother, left school at 12 years old, I've been told, to care for her new baby brother.  That's how old Gabi is now.  Then she went back and did a secretarial or business course, and worked until she married.  She told me, I am pretty sure, that she and Grandpa were very pleased she did not have to work after they got married, that this was very important to them, a point of pride, that he supported her.  Of course, she worked like crazy at home - her home was spotless and she was a consummate homemaker.  Every morning, she fresh squeezed Grandpa orange juice. 

My mother, her daughter-in-law, was the first woman in her family to go to college.  Her own mother wanted her to go to secretarial school.  She got a Ph.D.

I grew up between these two formidable women.  Grandma has been gone 20 years but her presence is very real in my life.  She was my only grandparent for 22 years after my grandfather, her husband died.  (My mother's parents had died relatively young - my grandmother before I was born and my grandfather when I was 4.)

My parents were super happy to be parents and often talked about how important it was to them to have children.  But at the same time, I felt that their work was more important to them than anything else, or maybe more that work was what defined a person's identity.

I noticed how deep my feelings about this run when I was on my first maternity leave.  Since I gave birth late, I had been out of college and working full time or in graduate school for like 20 years.  On maternity leave, my identity was "mom", but sometimes it felt more like "milk cow" and I noticed how hard it was to feel good about myself in that circumstance.

So when I figured out last year, in the wake of my illness and Vlad's death, that I really wanted to "make the main thing the main thing" and to be home more, to focus on my kids and to have the flexibility to travel more and see my parents more, to be available to my partner and to maintaining our home, it was very confusing to me, because it has meant giving up a professional identity that has been really important to me for 30 years and a career I have had for 20 years.  This is the first time in well over 30 years that I am not either a) working for a non-profit organization or b) a full time student or c) both.

What I miss most about my former job is my colleagues and the professional identity.  I can't believe I chose this kind of disconnected freedom.  My feelings are not so closely connected with earning money or working, because I've been working pretty much every day since I left my job.  I have work.  What I don't have is a job.  I opened a business so I can get paid, and I am trying to earn a certain amount and to be fully employed by the work I am doing, but I don't see myself as "building a business", I just see myself as working for myself and for clients who choose me to work for them.  It's much looser, less connected, and less demanding than what I have done before.  It feels oddly relaxed.

Then there are the dishes.  And cooking.  And homework, 4th grade homework.  The grocery shopping, the orthodontist appointments, the prescriptions, the taxes, and the house.  I wish I liked housework.  I don't like it any better than I did before I quit my job.  I will never be my grandmother.  But I do a bit more of it.  And I cook dinner every night, and do the dishes, and walk the dog, and don't feel exhausted.  I have time to notice my children and feel good about them - to listen to what they have to say and to try to respond to what they need.  I am way more relaxed at home.  I can say yes more often. 

I saw a woman with a beautiful dog a few weeks ago, and she was saying how they might give the dog up because they didn't have time to walk it as much as it needed.  I figured if my lifestyle didn't work for my dog, it was time to change my lifestyle.  Thanks Popeye.