On my mind

Maybe you have seen that President Obama said this:

And sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that's not a choice we want Americans to make.

I get that is just one bit of his speech.  I don't think he meant being a stay at home mom was bad.  (Surely not!) I read most of but didn't listen to the speech.  (I honestly can't take his pretend folksy style of speaking for more than 30 seconds.)

I have been thinking about being a stay at home mom though, maybe because my stay at home mom days are numbered.

There have been a few times that I've felt like it was a sacrifice to be a stay at home mom.  Mostly when we were really (really) poor.  Other times too though, like some of those days when my kids were irrational two feet tall whirling dervishes. It felt like a sacrifice to be home with my messy and needy children.  I felt like Adam had the luckier gig, going off to an office with grownups.  (As time has passed I've made the realization that some of his co-workers, though not two feet tall or as cute as our toddlers were, could be a little irrational too.)

Most of the time, staying home with my children has felt like a huge blessing, a luxury even.  Adam feels like it's a luxury too.  He's glad to have someone do the laundry and dishes and shop for food.  He's glad that when he comes home, it's to a (fairly) harmonious place where he will be fed and loved and he won't have to sort through the mail.

As for me, I have had the priceless front row seat to our children's development.  I've answered their questions and seen them learn to hold a spoon and walk and talk and get excited about holidays.  I've been able to be the one they see when they get home from school, I am here if they need me during the day and nothing really needs to be shuffled if they happen to be home from school, sick.

Not everyone has the good fortune to be able to choose to be a full time mother.  Everyday I'm thankful for the blessings in my life that make it possible for me.

I am grateful that I have options and that Emma will have options.  She knows she wants to be a mother but isn't sure what else she wants to "be." Over the years she has considered poet, chemist, astronomer, writer.  She's currently thinking about editor.  She asked me the other day, "Mom, will being an editor work with being a mother?"

I told her it would.  I told her that the time you are home with your kids isn't forever and she could definitely be an editor.  (This may just be the mother in me but I'm pretty sure Emma could be anything she wanted.)

I bought myself some extra time by home schooling but there's an imminent end to my full time mothering position.  I am dipping my toes into options for the next act of my life.  I am going to try to be a teacher again.  If I'd never stopped being a teacher when Braeden was born, I would have earned some seniority by now.  I would be higher on a pay scale and I would have learned a whole lot that would make me more marketable.

I can't imagine valuing any of that more than time spent at home with my children.  Staying home with them was a choice this American wanted to make.