I’m the person who tells people who need help that ‘I’m always available.’ There is always an extra seat at my table, and an extra full plate for that matter. I smile a lot, I love to listen, and whenever someone wants to listen to me, I go on about my hobbies and passions as if they were all there was to me. Maybe it’s my fault.
Maybe it’s my fault that an educated, highly positioned woman can still look at me, and say I’ve never worked a day in my life. Am I too enthusiastic when I praise such women for their workplace accomplishments? Does it give off the impression that the concept of work is novel and amusing to me?
Often, after I’ve cooked a meal for a group and expressions of gratitude come my way as I’m cleaning up, I’ll respond, “it was my pleasure!” And it was. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t work.
My husband comes home to the sight of me rolling on the floor with my two toddlers. I am surrounded by board books, percussion instruments, dress-up hats, and crayons. He remarks that it looks like we were having fun! And we were. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t work.
My littlest boy weighs thirty three pounds. Over the course of a twelve hour day, I squat down to pick him up over and over and over again, until my muscles are reduced to a tattered heap by the time I heft him a final time, placing him into his crib for the night. Sometimes, calming him as he cries, I coo into his ear, “Mommy loves to hold you.” And I do. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t work.
I never talk about my work like it’s work. I guess I feel like that would cheapen it. Plus, no one likes a complainer who isn’t a published critic or a politician. Not even me; I don’t like to hear myself complain. So I smile. I take every opportunity to engage in the fun activities I loved before I became a mother. I pretend that everything is pretty much the same as it was before. It is not.
What’s that I hear? Some mothers have to both have a job and do what you do? Wow. I had no idea. Surely my everyday interactions with human beings wouldn’t have informed me of that! Guess what the difference is? I acknowledge what they do as work. I give them props. But me? I’ve never worked a day in my life, according to some. I could, if I wanted to, get a job and find out what being a working Mom is like for myself. Not going to happen. Things that I would let happen first: I would wear only clothes I bought from the thrift store. I would live on the cheapest possible food. I would go groveling for help from my family, cementing my relatives’ image of me as a loser. Guess what? I’m there already. I guess I’m just that determined to be lazy.
That’s the world I live in. I have to struggle for my right to be misunderstood. Maybe I should be grateful to Ms. Rosen for proof that it’s working so well.
