Incipient invisibility

Did you know that I have an invisibility cloak?

I don't know where it came from, and I haven't figured out how to control it. I'm never sure when it's actually working, so I haven't gotten too bold with it yet, but I'm getting bolder every day.

It arrived somewhere between my 40th and 50th years, around the same time my hair started to go gray. In that time I've also gotten more tired and gained a few pounds. Happens to everyone, right?

Well, it turns out that the same people who used to make unsolicited comments to me in my younger, thinner years now can't see me at all. I've gone from uncomfortably noticed to uncomfortably overlooked, and I'm not sure which is worse. A trip to Home Depot is an exercise in futility now that I have to practically throw myself at a salesperson (if I can find one) to have a question answered.

It continues at work. Where my job used to put me in the middle of things, now I am occasionally notified when things happen that affect my work, but more often I hear things through the grapevine. I am not consulted about areas of my expertise, and my boss has no idea what I do all day. Nor does he want to know. I am baffled by this.

I feel like I should take advantage of this and just take off for the afternoon to see if anyone notices. Or shoplift, just to see what would happen. I might even be able to pull off a bank robbery.

With my luck, that would be the only time my cloak would fail me.

On the upside of the U curve

I haven't posted here since, it seems, 2009, although I wrote several unpublished posts in the interim. I have reached the age where news of death outnumbers news of births and marriages, and some of that has touched me deeply. My father died in 2012 after a brief war on lung cancer, and I lost my pseudo-brother suddenly and inexplicably last fall. The silver lining for the latter -- and I fight desperately every day to find one -- has been a strengthening of my relationship with his sister, my "pseudo-sister", who now finds herself an only child like me.

Despite these huge events, I find myself embarking on the upswing of the U curve cited by research on happiness among adults. Happiness, however they define it, reaches its nadir in the 40s, then begins an upward trend. One can't help correlating the curve with the age of offspring, with the nadir coinciding with the kids' teen years. Ok, I can't help it.

My life is more orderly now with two kids in college and the third in high school. The youngster is determined to give me a run for my money, but he's also very sweet, teetering on the fence between the little boy who still needs me and the capable young man who doesn't want to. They are all right where they should be, with all the angst that comes along for that ride.

Now my husband and I begin to become ourselves again. A grain of our youth remains, but we lack the physical energy to do all the things we imagine. We have purchased that large piece of land that we plan to leave alone as a refuge for ourselves as well as for wildlife. We can't wait to live there, but there is much to be done first, so it is an exercise in patience. But it has given us a new project, something to look forward to.

But it has also made it unbearably clear just how much -- or how little -- our children are still engaged in our lives. Our son is beyond excited about this property, full of plans and ideas, ready to spend every summer day there. Our oldest is too busy living her life to even visit very much; while she is living at home, she spends her time with her boyfriend and her friends, assembling her tribe. Our middle daughter is struggling with belonging somewhere; life isn't the same as it was in high school, so she's grieving a loss that none of us can quite put a finger on. As always, each of our children has had a very different reaction to this change: one highly positive, one negative (well, a don't care, really), and one in between. As it has always been, for everything.

What surprises me is how sanguine we all are about moving out of the house in which we have lived for almost 25 years. We spent our honeymoon there; the kids have grown up there; we have laughed and cried there. We are thoroughly done with it and ready to move on to our new adventure. I wonder if that will still be the case when the time comes to hand over the keys to another family.

...in defense of solitude...

I need a lot of time alone. I actually prefer to be alone.

Funny how I feel like I should be ashamed of that, like it's some kind of stigma. I'm not socially inept (at least I'm told I'm not), and I don't dislike people per se, but I find being around people tiring and difficult.

I'm lucky that I live in this technological time. I have friends that I haven't actually spoken to in years -- would never have heard from otherwise -- that I've reconnected with on Facebook. I'm able to keep in touch with a lot of people via email rather than hours talking on the phone.

But I just don't have time for that, and given a choice between talking on the phone with a friend I haven't spoken to in a while and reading a book, I'll choose the book every time. Relationships with people take effort, and I have to put enough effort into my family and my work relationships that I don't have any energy left at the end of the day. My children alone can sap the interpersonal strength right out of me, and I love them dearly. I almost always find myself thinking about the dozen things I have to get done by the end of the day and scolding myself for wasting time.

So, consider this an open apology to all my friends that I never call. None of you read this blog, but it's the thought that counts, right? See you on Facebook.

Options

It's been a long time, and much has happened...

I've gone from being a tired, frustrated, angry stay-at-home-mom to a tired, frustrated, angry working mom.

Why the transformation? One word: options. Despite all the articles I read about professional women who took the career off-ramp to raise their children for a while, I saw my meaningfulness (is that a word? It looks to me like one of those German words that's just other words all pushed together, like gutenmorgenfahrvergnugen or something) dwindle to nothing. My children are growing up before my eyes, and pretty soon I'll be one of those fat, middle-aged meek mothers you see sitting quietly at graduation with a wistful smile, hands folded, hiding the desperate panic that grips her as she realizes that her entire reason for living is about to embark on the life she envisioned for herself all those years ago. That's right before her husband announces that he's flying to Bermuda with his administrative assistant for a "conference", if you know what I mean...

I started working part time last summer, a little over half a day, so I was home for my kids in the afternoons, and they got to spend the whole morning with their grandma, who needed to be needed. Win-win-win, right? For a while, yes. Then, in the fall, I expanded my hours a bit. I'm still home when my kids get home from school, but I leave before they get up in the morning, so their father gets them off to school. Another good thing: kids get more quality time with Dad, and Dad gets to participate more in the whole child-rearing thing. I never enjoyed the morning routine, so I don't really miss it.

But now the honeymoon is over. The job got harder when colleagues left and I had to do their work. I find it harder to get home on time, and to get the housework done in the time left. All the family teamwork that worked so well in the fall has fallen by the wayside, and the kids are back to spending hours buried in books while Mom does all the laundry and nags them to clean their rooms. Dad is resentful because Mom is more tired than before, Mom is angry because the house is a disaster and no one's doing anything about it, and the kids are either oblivious or in open rebellion.

How do people do it?? I am at a complete loss as to how the general public handles this dual-income thing without having a complete meltdown at least once a month. I visit the homes of families where both partners work, and they're uncluttered and spotless. I don't know how to do that without actually moving out of my house. I spend all my free time driving the kids to various activities, hammering away at the endless mountain of laundry, and paying bills. My husband handles most of the grocery shopping and cooking, and no one does the cleaning. It's a miracle that my son gets a bath every now and then.

Do I have to make a choice between having a job and having leisure activities now? Is that the secret?

I keep hearing about happiness studies that show a U-shaped curve, with the nadir of happiness occurring in the 40s. That's around the same time that most people are raising teenagers and tweens, working hard to keep their jobs in a questionable economy, and often taking care of their aging, ailing parents. Gosh, I can't imagine why we'd be unhappy dealing with those things. Do we really need a study for this? The one good thing about it is knowing that it will probably get better. If we're able to keep our jobs. And if there is affordable (universal? please?) health care when we reach retirement age. And if our children don't go off the rails and become drug addicts or homicidal maniacs or, worse, victims of a DUI on their seventeenth birthday. (My nightmares are vivid, count on that).

I need options. The means to send my kids to college no matter how much it costs. The wherewithal to go it on my own if my husband and I just can't stand each other anymore. The money to buy a piece of land in the middle of nowhere that I can leave alone and go visit when the planet just refuses to slow down.

Women so wanted these options, for so long. But now that we have them, how do we handle the family demands that haven't gone away, that aren't yet shared equally between the partners? I can handle the job, it's the parenting and housekeeping that I'm having trouble with. Amidst all of it, I'm trying to hold onto the person I was before all this started. I never knew it would be this hard just to stay me.

Turn it off! For God's sake, turn it off!

I have neighbors who, although they are lovely people, often do something that makes me angry and fearful for the future of the global village and of the planet. They drive to the bus stop (or somewhere else in the neighborhood that they could walk to easily) and then sit there with their motors running, even in lovely, temperate weather.

Some other people will drive up to the bus stop, get out of the car to chat and leave it running. Now that really doesn't make sense to me. What is the point? It's not keeping you warm (or cool), you're not listening to the radio, so why? The other day another neighbor came over to drop something off. She left her car running in my driveway while she came to the door. We inevitably started talking about this and that, so her quick visit turned into several minutes while her empty car chugged away. As she left my porch, she bemoaned mildly the cost of gasoline. Sometimes, I want to just bang my head against the wall. Or hers.

Now, granted, I'm one of those people -- I turn off my car at long stop lights. I'm so worried about global warming that I hang my clothes out to dry until the temperature drops below freezing and I can't feel my fingers by the time I've taken them down. I sometimes take three times as long to do the grocery shopping because I insist on riding my bike to the store (when I have the time and the weather is half-decent -- I'm not a martyr). And my house is always cold because I won't turn the heat pump up over 65 in the winter (wear thermal underwear! put on a sweater! my children hear when they complain). I'm sure my neighbors think I'm just as much of an oddball for doing all those things, and, let's face it, they're not wrong.

But is it really asking too much for drivers to turn off an idling car for a few minutes while they wait for children to emerge from school? Is it a hardship to wear a warm jacket in the car so you don't have to keep it running for the heat? It's not impossible to turn off a car on a beautiful spring day when it's a perfect 68 degrees, is it? The exact numbers vary, but experts say that, if your car is off for ten to thirty seconds before you turn it back on, you've come out ahead in gas consumption. Thirty seconds, people!

Even if you don't believe the science about global warming, this kind of thing hits you in your wallet. Our electric bills went down significantly this fall when I started drying all our clothes outside. Given a choice between joining a karate school three minutes away versus 15 minutes away, we joined the closer one. Each decision is small, but they add up to an ability to live very comfortably on one income.

We don't deprive ourselves, either. We just prioritize, and we indulge the things that are important to us and jettison the stuff that isn't. Being mindful about other areas of our life has given us the wherewithal to pursue the things that are important to us, and that makes the small sacrifices worthwhile.

Day Care and the SAHM (or, Validation and the Modern Woman)

This is a debate that is never going to end. Studies will continue to be done, psychobabble televangelists will continue to expound with ever-greater pomposity, and women will continue to second-guess their career choices forever and ever, amen.

What we're all really doing is looking for validation. Did I make the right choice in staying home with my children? Would it be better for them if I went back to work and put them in day care, giving us more money for trips to Europe and piano lessons? We need someone to tell us that what we're doing is right for our children and/or for ourselves, and that it's okay to put ourselves or our children first, whichever one we've tried to do. Thank you, feminism, for giving us the choice, and thank you, Eli Lilly, for giving us Prozac so we can deal with the cultural/personal/financial consequences of that choice.

Why are we so dependent on this outside validation? Why isn't it enough that our family is happy with whatever our situation is? Are we all determined to be SuperMom and outdo every other woman on the planet? Or are we all vast sinkholes of need, requiring constant positive feedback to maintain our own self-esteem?

Because it seems that it's not enough for women to be happy with their own arrangements. We need everyone else to be happy with them, too, or we consider them a failure. How interesting it is that men are seldom plagued with these doubts. It is my impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that men are happy if they are happy, but women aren't happy unless everyone else is happy, too. And that's the thing that is going to keep women as primary caregivers until the end of time.

I am a SAHM whose children are all in school all day. I could easily go back to work; in fact, I was offered, and declined, a full-time job at a local college. The problem is, the full-time job I already have isn't going to go away. The house will still have to be cleaned, dinner will still have to be made, laundry will have to be done, child care will still be of utmost importance, but I'll have a lot less time to do it all in, and zero time to sit and contemplate a story idea, read a book, play the piano, etc. I have no illusions about how much my husband will do around the house: he already does pretty much what he's going to do, and I'm not ready to go into unending battle to get him to do more. But I still troll the job listings, just in case the perfect job appears out of nowhere. Niggling guilt hangs at the back of my mind, repeating the trope that, because I can work, I should work. I feel guilty because I like being home by myself all day, and somehow that translates into being selfish.

So I'm staying home with the kids, yes, but I have to admit, these days it's an excuse for staying home and doing what I want to do for a change. I could go back to work, sure, but I don't really want to. I feel like I should for future financial security, but if I do, I'll never get another chance like this. I started working when I was 13 years old, and this is the first time in my life that I've felt like I have time to follow some dreams, try out new things. When I was young and single, I was so desperately afraid of being without health insurance and a paycheck that I worked my ass off and went to graduate school at the same time. Then, when my children were tiny, I ran my own business while they slept until I just couldn't physically handle the sleep deprivation anymore. This is my first taste of freedom, and I'm not ready to give it up for a bunch of shoulds.

But there's this part-time job I found on careerbuilder....

If you're bored, you're not paying attention...

The other day a fellow mom from my daughters' school told me she was getting a seasonal job because she was bored.

This is mind-boggling to me.

In a world at war, with thousands of children going hungry, with the Internet open 24/7, how is it possible to get bored?? There is always another book to read, another blog to write, another boneheaded government move to protest.

I have the opposite problem. The world of ideas is so vast and there is so much to be done that I can't wrap my mind around it. I have to take things piece by piece, in baby steps, just to begin to comprehend their place in the world, not to mention my own. There are days when I find it all so overwhelming that I just want to admit defeat and pull the covers over my head. There are also days when I blow a whole morning jumping from blog to blog, even reading all the trolls, just to get a glimpse of the sheer variety of human nature. That, and, well, a few Daily Show videos.

I can't remember being bored in my adult life, ever. As a kid, sure, sometimes, but that was in the Dark Ages before computers and cell phones and a driver's license of my own. Now I am paralyzed by choice, unable to do much of anything because I can't decide where to start. I'm not even bored by housework since I got an iPod. Now I can listen to books or podcasts while I'm folding laundry and doing dishes. My days are framed by the departures and arrivals of my children, but I have a good seven hours to call my own, most days. I wish I could say I was using them to the fullest. I'm new at this kids-in-school-all-day thing. Maybe I'll get the hang of it eventually.

When they go to college.

The Way We Live Now

(With apologies to the New York Times Magazine)

I have three children. Let's just get that out there right now. They're a big part of my life, and they dictate how I spend most of my time. I also have a husband, two aging parents and a mother-in-law. Now you know my dirty little secret.

All of my children are now in school all day, so I thought I'd go back to paid work. I worked part time for six years, running my own consulting business until I burned out from the exhaustion of caring for little kids all day, trying to get my work done at night, and, most importantly, my husband's attitude that my work came, at best, third, and my clients were supposed to understand that. It's been four years of SAHMing since I closed the business, and I've had enough of endless housework with nothing to show for myself at the end of the year. No raises, no respect.

Well, hah! Just *try* to find a job if you admit that you have a family that's important to you. Parents have gotten such a bad rap for taking time off for doctor appointments, school functions, and *gasp* family vacations that no one wants to hire us. Why hire someone like me when they can get a single, carefree recent college graduate to work longer hours, probably for less money and fewer benefits? They'll take longer to do not quite as good a job, but by golly they'll warm that chair for the right eight hours, and that's what counts.

Families are the new dirty little secret. Everyone has them, but no one dares acknowledge that they enjoy them or consider them important. Society would literally stop without them, but, hey, "it's the economy, stupid." If it doesn't help the bottom line, it's not going to happen. So, even though I could do a better job in a particular position, getting more done in less time, I won't get the job because I need some flexibility in my time. We're not talking about critical, fault-intolerant systems here, or bizarre work schedules. I don't apply for those jobs precisely because the hours are fixed and I understand why that's necessary. I apply for jobs where the work has to get done, but you don't have to be there 9-5 to do it.

I'm told that I shouldn't even mention that I need flexible hours. That seems disingenuous to me. I know that I want to be home for my children after school, which means working early hours -- not excessively early, just something like 7-3 -- and it seems reasonable to me to make that clear from the start. Is that wrong? Otherwise, I feel like I'm pulling a bait-and switch, and I hate those. But I'm expected to act like I have nothing else in my life but this potential job, like I live only for this company or that. Is that really what we've become??

This is a scary trend, with the Linda Hirshmans of the world telling us that caring for our own children is wrong and the child-free movement telling us that even having them is a bad thing. Just how does civilization continue if families and children aren't valued? And it's not a problem within the home, as Hirshman posits, but in the workplace; parents have trouble balancing work and family because their work environments don't value their families. They see families as a drain on our energy, not restorative. People in this country don't even take all their vacations anymore, largely because they're afraid of being dispensable at work!

Hirshman decries the highly-educated women of today who opt out of the rat race to enjoy their children. Who can blame them? When companies routinely lay off the employees that do the actual work in order to lavish bonuses on the top few, why should we give them our loyalty? Where is the real reward here? A paycheck, yes, but with a certain soullessness to go with it. You don't dare invest yourself too much in any job because it will just devastate you when you lose it. The problem isn't with staying home with your children when they need you. The obstacles come when you want to go back to paid work but you don't want to devote your entire life to it. That's when you find it impossible, and that's true across the board.

Most of the current "opt-out" generation hasn't found that out yet. They blithely think they can go back anytime, and perhaps many will, depending on their professions and their locations. But their children are still young, so it's on the back burner. What they don't understand is that they will always want to be there for their children, so going back to 80-hour weeks is not going to appeal to them, nor will it even be an option. They will be forever tainted.

They might as well wear a scarlet 'M'.