I Really Miss Trapper Keepers

Hey can you take the trash out while you still have your snow boots on? My husband walks in the door to me yapping orders. It’s only Monday but I’m already a bit fried. Another snowy and icy week where the kids and I will move from room to room and go through the motions of playing, eating, napping, repeat.

Yeah, but I don’t even need them anymore. The sun must have melted the driveway! <said with the same tone one would remark about the unicorn giving free rides in the park>

My husband didn’t even consider that I shoveled the driveway--the crumbling, uneven driveway, with compacted snow from his tire tracks.

While the kids napped.

When I usually like to sit for a minute and watch women of great wealth snark at each other.

The sun?! The SUN? THE SUN?!?! IT. WAS. ME!  I was in the midst of trying to cook dinner while simultaneously yelling at the kids to play nicely and at the dogs to stop making piles of slobber near where I was chopping veggies. My hair was frizzy and thrown into a messy ponytail. The black yoga pants I pulled on in the morning were covered in yellow dog fur with traces of toddler sneeze. And, like my face, my hooded zip-up looked tired and crumpled. 

For the rest of the night I whacked away at that deceased horse:

Thanks for dinner. It was good.

Oh, no problem--THE SUN DID ALL THE WORK!

Do you know where Sass put her pacifier?

I don’t know...why don’t you ASK THE SUN?!

I know, I know…I can be a long day.

It feels wrong to me to complain about being a stay-at-home-mom when things get rough. It’s like I’m complaining about my family…which I am. I feel shrill and bitchy when I do it. If I go on about how Sassafrass never.stops.moving, it makes me feel guilty, like I am somehow saying I don’t like my kid. But, three years ago? I was complaining about my boss who called me in to accuse me of forging an office document and threw papers at my head (might I clarify that I did not and he just looked in the wrong file folder). Well, that was more interesting cocktail banter than a fidgety toddler.

I was a philosophy major (one of three women in the program) and went on to become a criminal defense attorney. I was in and out of lock up in the county jail and it never phased me. I am quite comfortable in what my grandparent’s generation would have considered a “man’s world.” It wasn’t that I ever avoided a more “traditional” life; I think it was just that I didn’t realize I actually wanted it. 

I was lucky enough to work part-time after Monkey, but I still wasn’t happy. I wanted to be home with him every day. I felt like I had a foot in each world, and both were slipping. After all those years of pricey education I felt guilty wanting to stay home with Monkey. I felt like it would be interpreted as laziness or occupational malaise.

After Sassafrass was born my husband and I figured out how I could stay at home full-time with the kids. It was a mutual sacrifice chosen by my husband and I together. We reduced both our income and my sanity. I was a public defender making shockingly little money for how much my degree cost, and I never really had a tight grip on my horses, so one could argue the sacrifices were minimal. But still. I got what I wanted so desperately.

Therefore, I should not be entertaining any negative feelings towards my new chosen profession.  

Just because you get to walk on the path you chose doesn’t mean it’s easy. I had wanted to go to law school for as long as I could remember. The dream was born right after my belief that I was the next great fashion designer. I turned in my Trapper Keeper of fashion sketches for a calendar full of scheduled trials and briefs. When I got to law school and realized it was just piles of hard work, I actually felt lucky to be living my dream. Many people were there because they didn’t know what else to do with their lives. Those classmates were like the kids in gym forced to run laps for punishment and the rest of us happy law students were the cross-country team. But living my dream didn’t mean the papers and exams sucked any less.

So I find myself again in the same position: I want to be a stay at home mom and consider myself lucky to be able to do it, but it still doesn’t feel right. I don’t even look the part. I don’t do well looking “casual.” If I throw on a t-shirt and jeans I look like I got a 3 a.m. call to meet someone in the emergency room. I never really rocked the business suit either. I seemed to believe my suit jackets were somehow magical, thus preventing the outside world from seeing that underneath I was wearing the tank top I purchased in eleventh grade. No life choice has ever really “fit.”  

I spend my days doing what a chauvinistic relative calls “the domestics.” I find myself planning meals, cleaning the house, doing my husband’s laundry and sometimes not leaving the house for days on end.  I work in service of my husband and children, and a lot of the time I feel overworked and under appreciated. But doesn’t every working adult?

How many spouses give you a pat on the back for meeting that presentation deadline? Grading that stack of papers with days to spare? That’s the conundrum of being a stay-at-home-mom. It’s your job…but your co-workers are the very same people you would have complained to about other co-workers.  

That little so-and-so that ate your lunch out of the office fridge? The lunch you were looking forward to all morning? Well, you really shouldn’t call him names. He’s three and he wanted leftover Indian for lunch, too.  Whining about that judge who makes you tape all the staples on your briefs (true story) because it may snag their robe? That makes you sound wearied and noble. Complaining that your husband wears too many freakin’ t-shirts…as you count aloud to prove your point? That makes you sound kinda pitiful and makes people think you need to get out more.

I have a friend who is just meant to be a stay-at-home-mom. She was born for it. She does a fantastic job, and it is so obvious that it is in her DNA. I know another woman who was counting down the days of her maternity leave. She loves her son as much as a stay-at-home mom loves her kids, but she happily returned to the office.  

When I was part-time it felt odd. Like playing the role of a grownup in a third grade play. I want to be the type of stay-at-home-mom that exudes whatever my friend has. I want it to be in my bones--staying at home. But it isn’t. Thursdays are the worst. I have held it together as long as I can. I have pressed play, picked up Cheerios and smiled through the same question 37 times. I am done. I am a cranky tyrant on Thursdays. But didn’t I feel that way when I worked in an office? Hell, maybe I’m just super-lazy and don’t enjoy hard work.

I am still floundering a bit. Like that bad grade I got in Ethics class during college (I know, make your lawyer jokes), the Civil Procedure teacher who, I swear, was speaking Greek, and the magistrate who had it out for me my first year at the Public Defender’s Office. These things make me question the path I have chosen. I may look like a “before” picture on a makeover segment and I can be rather cranky…but I’m happy. I love that I get to stay at home with my kids. I am very grateful that I, again, have my dream job.

Maybe I was right with the first dream though… I could design stay-at-home-mom uniforms! Stain repellent, comfortable yet flattering. Gotta go find a Trapper Keeper.

-Elizabeth