In my quest to not become my mother, I inadvertently became my mother. It finally struck me; 18 weeks pregnant, slippers, 2-year old playing on the floor, fully engaged in tackling the pile of ironing that I have to do every week to keep my husband in his business casual duds. It was like deja vu except instead of me being the kid playing on the floor, I was suddenly my mom. Not the kind of epiphany I wanted to have this early in the morning.
It wasn't the "mom" part that made me not want to be like my mom, it wasn't the cooking, cleaning, ironing; it was the loneliness and isolation. The fact that even though she was unhappy in her marriage for many years, she felt like she had to stick it out because she was uneducated and not prepared to tackle being the bread winner and the homemaker at the same time. I watched all of this unfold as a kid and then later as a teenager. My mom worked her ass of doing any little odd job that she could do from home to help supplement my dad's income. She took in ironing, she watched kids, she baked cakes, she even sometimes cleaned houses. This was her way of contributing. She was also horribly isolated. Back in the late 80s early 90s, there wasn't much support for the stay at home mom. No moms groups to join; no Stroller Strides or MOPS. The way I saw it, they just all trudged through it alone.
My mom's anxiety and unhappiness was often palpable in our house. It caused her to say things to me and my sister that would later shape us our personalities as adults. We knew that she was unhappy. And while my sister, who is 7 years older than I am, was able to rebel and kick and scream to cope, I just spent a lot of time reading and crying and hoping that I would be the kid she wanted me to be and that I could make her happy. This, of course, never happened. Eventually my mom got a job at the school that I went to and a few years after that she decided to go to college and she did graduate earn her bachelor's degree, 2 years after I did in 2007.
As a teenager, neither one of my parents were around much. My dad had never been around much because of his job and my mom had fully committed herself to her career and her studies. And yet I still did everything I could to get her approval. Which turned out to be to my benefit since I was on my own a lot and I never even considered getting in trouble. I just wanted her to be proud of me. So I worked my ass off in school. Took AP classes, participated in every thing I could, I went to conferences, and applied for scholarships and I did a lot of stuff that I probably shouldn't have done too. Don't get me wrong; I was no angel but my adolescent transgressions were few and far between and weren't anything out of the ordinary. I also knew that if I didn't somehow make myself spectacular and go to college, that I would wind up facing the same circumstances that she did.
But still I felt like my mom's past was haunting me. I managed to get out of college unscathed but at 19 I found myself pregnant. My mom having been a teen mom herself, couldn't fathom how this could happen since she had put on the pill at 14 as a way to prevent me from becoming a teen mom. This, of course, didn't go over well. At 19, I also lost my first love to a car accident; my mom went through a divorce at the same age. At 20, I finally accomplished my goal of finishing college. This was enough to make me once and for all decidedly not like my mom, right? Apparently not.
Nine years later, I'm a stay at home mom myself. I'm a wife to a man that works horrifically long hours most of the time and is rarely home. Much like my dad he has a 2 hour commute one way to work. I do what I can to supplement his income by working from home. Instead of taking in ironing and kids, I teach for probably much the same kind of wages my mom earned for her odd jobs. I'm often lonely, though thanks to years of therapy in my early 20s, I'm much better equipped to handle things than my mom was even if it's just reaching out through Facebook or email.
It wasn't all bad growing up; I think it's just sometimes easier to remember the hard stuff. My mom taught us a lot of things that I am really grateful for now. Thanks to my mom, I know how to clean and sew (although I hate sewing). I know how very very important education is; no matter how tight money was, my mom always found ways to buy my books that I so desperately clung to as a kid. I know that because I'm a wife/mother my husband, my kids, and my home are a reflection of me so even though my kid might throw a tantrum in the middle of Target, he's wearing clean clothes and he's bathed and he's probably also throwing a few thank yous and pleases in there.
My mom taught me how to crease pants and iron shirts.
